


The Secrets You've Been Keeping

by LunaCatriona



Series: Black Water [3]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Mystery, Serious Illness, angsty, sometimes funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-10 14:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 61,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12913539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaCatriona/pseuds/LunaCatriona
Summary: "And you booked a ticket, but you don't know where you're going; and you won't tell me for fear I'll follow suit; you've been trying to save me from your past of bad decisions; but my decision's always gonna be to follow you."- 'Glowing' by The ScriptThings have quickly gone from bad to worse for Malcolm Tucker. Secrets, he has learned, are toxic. His own secrets drove him to the brink of destruction; Nicola backed herself into a corner by keeping secrets from him. They're better for knowing the truth.So when Malcolm realises Nicola has kept a deadly secret from him, he would rather know the truth, no matter what it does to him. She, however, has kept silent until there's nothing left to do - except, perhaps, run.





	1. Six Weeks

**Author's Note:**

> SSE emailed me to say they MIGHT have to fiddle with the connection and, going by my recent luck, I'm not trusting them not to fuck up. Hence why I'm just gonna post this now. It's set in mid-February, about six weeks after the end of the last one.
> 
> Meanwhile, I'm away to buy a Christmas tree, having broken the 22-year-long tradition of putting the bloody thing up on St. Andrew's Day. Wish me patience. I don't have much.

Malcolm Tucker switched on the television in his office as he pulled his coat off, only getting to Downing Street at ten o’clock. He had been forced to stop by the Office for International Development to tell the Secretary of State he was a fucking moron, after it transpired this morning that he had leaked some data he really should never have dared leak.

He could barely feel his hands until walking into this building. Now they stung as they adjusted unwillingly from eight below zero to a positively Mediterranean twenty-one. It was a hard winter; even in February, the temperature was seldom above freezing.

“…now we have the Secretary of State for Scotland, Mrs Bella Whyte,” a male morning television host announced. “Welcome, Mrs. Whyte.”

“Thanks for having me,” Bella smiled that utterly terrifying grin. “It’s great to be here, discussing some brilliant progress we’re making.”

“Yes,” said the other host – a woman – as Bella pushed that insane blonde hair of hers behind her ears. “Today you will be unveiling some plans for cross-party cooperation between the UK and Scottish Governments. So, what does this entail?”

“It’s all about keeping Scottish culture alive, while making sure Scottish people still feel like they are part of the United Kingdom,” Bella explained. She held an eloquence on air that she completely abandoned at all other times. “And as we all know, the First Minister has made no secret of the desire for some real attention to certain areas of Scottish development from our Government.”

The male host was close enough to Bella, leering over her, that Malcolm was tempted to go down to that studio and throw him out of the window. “Is there a reason for this sudden change of heart from the government?”

Bella gave the man a withering look. “Well, as I have just said, the First Minister and, indeed, most of Scotland has been calling for a better working relationship between Holyrood and Westminster. A lot of what we do in this scheme is work together with reserved and devolved powers, doing things in the most efficient and beneficial manner possible. Most of that is simple common sense; it’s not a task on an impossible scale as some of my colleagues would have you think. It’s clear to see that many of the laws and attitudes in Scotland have diverged from the rest of the United Kingdom, which is bound to happen in many countries, and it’s about time the decisions made that affect Scotland within this government reflect that. On certain matters, other Cabinet ministers will not cooperate, but I do not see the point of fighting these changes cropping up in Scotland. To do that only undermines Scottish people and it undermines the Scottish Parliament. It’s far better to work as a team to achieve a good result for the majority than it is to fight for the sake of having a barny and scramble for something less than what can be achieved if people just sit down and talk.”

The woman interviewing Bella looked slightly taken aback, as most were when they realised Bella Whyte was actually a fairly competent politician. “Is it true you will be working with the Scottish Government to revive the Gaelic language?”

“Yes,” Bella said simply.

“Is there a particular reason for that?”

“In my constituency,” Bella replied, “road signs are bilingual. Supermarket signs are bilingual. The Bank of Scotland has another sign on its door that reads ‘Banca na h-Alba’. The location signs at rail stations all over Scotland are in both English and Gaelic. The language is not dead, and nor should it ever be.”

“Some would argue that the language of the United Kingdom is English.”

“Do those people have the same objection to the use of the Welsh and Irish languages as they seem to have to the use of Scots and Gaelic?” Bella retorted testily. Malcolm gave a wry smile. His daughter was no idiot. “If it’s commonplace for children in Wales and Northern Ireland to learn their native languages, then it should be the same in Scotland, for those children who wish to take it up.”

“Do your children speak Gaelic?” the male host asked.

“There aren’t any Gaelic-medium schools here,” Bella said, “and my eldest was in the Gaelic school in Portree, so my husband and I teach them Gaelic at home. Their au pair – she’s a wonderful young woman from Ireland – explains to them the differences in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Most of the time we will revert to Scots, as my family is originally from Tayside. They are basically multilingual children.”

“And you,” the man chipped in, “are known for your unusual use of language in the Scottish Office. There are reports that you speak a language nobody even recognises.”

“Old Scots,” Bella shot back at him. “I was brought up in a very old-fashioned family.”

There was a tense silence after Bella told what was essentially a lie. What she sometimes spoke was not Old Scots. It was cant, and cant was derived from a combination of the Scots, Gaelic and Romany languages. Malcolm sat down at his desk and opened his laptop while the female interviewer realised it was time to stop challenging Bella on the ins and outs of language. “On a more personal level, it’s been a tough time within the Cabinet recently,” she changed the subject. “We all know that Malcolm Tucker has been under a great deal of pressure, not least with the expenses scandals, but with his own life, too. When it came out that the Secretary for Social Affairs and Citizenship-”

“My d-” Bella snapped, but stopped herself short of completing that phrase; thankfully, the host had not stopped talking and all but drowned her out. “Malcolm Tucker,” she corrected herself with a breath, obviously trying not to be visibly infuriated, “deals with things in his own unique way. Nobody forgets any dressing down they get from him – let’s just say they become more memorable when he’s under stress. But he will be fine.”

The male host frowned for a moment. “Will you be at Greenwich Chapel today?”

“Of course. The Prime Minister and all the Cabinet Ministers will be there. But don’t worry,” she said with a grin, “they’re not taking the whole day off.”

“Okay,” the woman smiled. “Thank you for that, Mrs. Whyte. Next up-”

But Malcolm switched the television off and put his head in his hands. He was going to have to have a serious fucking conversation with Bella about not letting certain things slip in temper. The last thing he needed was accusations of nepotism, even if they were completely unfounded. If nothing else, he didn’t want to have to replace Bella with one of the only other two Scottish MPs they had; the stress of dealing with them daily might just explode his brain.

Bella, however, didn’t return to her office until nearly midday. When he heard that she was back, he headed straight over there, stalked into her office and slammed the door behind him. “You,” he snarled, pointing a finger at her. She looked up from her papers, her hair sprawled over her face. “You fucking daft lassie! You nearly-”

“They were about to bring up Nicola on fucking live television!” she snapped. “It was none of their business, for a start! Would you rather I’d discussed your fucking-”

“No, but I’d rather you fucking didn’t call me Dad on live television!” he replied. “You know what’ll happen! They’ll be fucking shouting ‘nepotism’ from the top of the fucking Shard!”

“Aye, because we had the faintest idea about any of it when I was appointed,” she rolled her eyes. “They’ll work out what’s going on this afternoon, when my fucking kinchins start calling you Grandad for all the hantle tae hear!” That, unfortunately, was a very fair point, and one Malcolm could do nothing about. He couldn’t ask Eilidh and Alasdair to change their behaviour for public outings – that way madness lay. “What the fuck are you doing at work, anyway?” she added.

Malcolm leaned over her desk, holding her stare. “You were on fucking TV,” he replied. “Someone had to be here to give you a fucking bollocking afterwards.”

Bella sighed and shook her head, getting to her feet. He turned as his eyes followed her until she stood right in front of him. “Dad, go home, calm down and get changed. I’ll see you there.” She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “And don’t get pished. I’m not big enough to carry you into the kirk.”

“Don’t worry,” he answered her. “I’ve got the fucking doctor in half an hour, before I do anything.”

“Good,” Bella nodded. He gave him a quick hug and said, “Go.”

* * *

 

“Malcolm Tucker?” called the GP, Dr. Easton.

Malcolm stood up and followed the doctor to his office, and sat down in the chair near the desk. These rooms were always painfully bright, the strip lights reflecting off the ridiculously white walls.

“So, Malcolm,” Dr. Easton said. “You’ve been on sertraline for six weeks, correct?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. His mind was elsewhere. He was only here because he made a promise, and it wasn’t to himself. “Yeah, you put me on it right after New Year.”

“How do you feel it’s working?” asked the doctor.

“It blunts the edges,” Malcolm answered. “Makes it all a bit blurrier, easier to live with.”

“And are you going to continue with your counselling?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I promised Nicola I would.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Easton sighed, taking his glasses off. “Nicola. How are you coping?”

Malcolm rolled his eyes internally. Why was everyone so interested on how he, of all people, was coping? “I’ll be fine. My main priority is the kids. Try and disrupt things as little as possible for them, you know? But we’ve got Nicola’s mum helping, and my eldest daughter – she’s brilliant with them,” he trailed away absentmindedly.

Dr. Easton frowned. “Your eldest is thirteen, isn’t she?”

“Oh,” Malcolm said, realising now what he had said. “No. I have another daughter from a previous relationship. She’s in her thirties now.”

“Ah, I see.”

Malcolm shook his head slightly, trying to refocus his attentions to where he needed to be. “Listen, I’m sorry, but I have to go home. Got to get the wee man ready – he never buttons his shirt up right,” he smiled slightly.

“Of course,” Dr. Easton smiled; he put his glasses back on and looked at his computer screen. As he typed, he said, “How are you feeling about this afternoon?” he asked conversationally.

Malcolm thought for a moment, searching for the right label for the knot in his stomach. “Anxious,” he decided.

“Perfectly natural,” the doctor reminded him.

“So everybody keeps telling me,” grumbled Malcolm.

“If you’re happy to continue with the sertraline, I’ll prescribe some more at the same dose, and see you again in a fortnight, alright? But as always, if anything goes wrong, phone reception and ask for an emergency appointment.”

He printed off a prescription slip, which Malcolm took, and reiterated that he had to come back in two weeks’ time. It was completely on autopilot that he booked an appointment at reception and headed over to the pharmacy to pick up his antidepressants. He had been determined not to end up on medication, but Nicola had talked him round to the idea. She had a bizarre knack for explaining how mental health worked; perhaps that was because she’d struggled with her own mental health most of her life.

As he stepped out of the chemist, he could feel the threat of snow lingering in the air. This winter had been horrendous, but maybe it only felt that way because he was in London, and Londoners could not deal with Scottish winters. That was fact that never ceased to wind him up; when would they all learn that it did no good to flail in bad weather?

He only hoped there was no black ice on any pavements by nightfall. The combination of alcohol, high heels, ice and Bella Whyte was never a good one.

* * *

 

“I’m home!” Malcolm shouted as he closed the front door behind him. “Sorry I’m late. Doctor was running fucking late, surprise surprise.”

Ben Murray ran out of the living room and dived at Malcolm. “Dad!” he shouted. “Euan said I have to wear a suit!”

“Mate, we’ve been over this,” Malcolm sighed, crouching down to be at Ben’s eye-level. “You have wear your suit because Mummy wants us all to look smart. Sophie and Ella will be in dresses, and you know how much Ella loves wearing a dress,” he added with a grin. “You don’t hear her complaining, do you?”

Ben shook his head, but still had that stubborn look on his face.

“Tell you what, you thrawn wee bugger,” Malcolm smiled, “we can take some jeans and a shirt with us and you can change once we’re out the chapel, okay?”

The boy perked up at that idea, and ran up the stairs to get his favourite green shirt and black jeans that Malcolm knew were already ironed and hanging in his wardrobe for this very reason. Euan appeared at the living room door, already suited up. “Sophie, Ella and Eilidh are already away wi’ Victoria,” he told Malcolm, holding out a mug of coffee. “I’ve got Alasdair ready. Bella’s gonnae pick up Aoife and they’ll go tae Victoria’s, who’ll drive tae the kirk. Bella cannae be trusted not tae get half-cut before she even gets there.”

Malcolm noted vaguely that he had lived here so long he had unwittingly Anglicised where Bella and Euan did not – there was a time he would have called it a kirk, too.

“Aye, she might well want a drink. She fucked up this morning,” Malcolm informed Euan as he took a sip of coffee. “She tell you that?”

“Naw. Whit happened?”

“She nearly said ‘my dad’ on live national television,” he scowled. Euan, Malcolm was irritated to find, was obviously fighting back laughter. “It’s not funny, Euan!”

“Malcolm, it can’t stay a secret forever,” Euan pointed out, as he pulled the marker pens away from Alasdair and offered him a picture book instead. “It’ll probably all come oot the day, anyway.”

“That’s what Bella said,” Malcolm sighed. “I suppose, either way, we can’t replace her, when the only other two Scottish MPs we have are known either for defrauding West Lothian Council or just being downright fucking unhinged.”

Euan laughed. “See? It’ll blow over and naeb’dy’ll gie a fuck in a week. Oh, by the way, Bella called yer ma the other night. She’s come doon wi’ Verity, Adam and the kinchin.”

“Fucking hell,” Malcolm muttered. “She’s seventy-five, Euan. She doesn’t need dragged down-”

“She wanted tae come doon,” Euan cut across him. “She was a wee bit pissed off that you and Verity decided not to tell her ‘til it was done. So, aye, ye’ll hae yer ma tae deal wi’, but I’m sure she’ll be grand after gettin’ tae moan at Verity since last night. Apparently, she’s not impressed by the sleeper train,” he grinned.

Malcolm shook his head. He struggled to understand how Euan Whyte could be so relaxed about everything, until he remembered the stories of an upbringing and youth spent mostly in trouble of others’ making. The night Euan spent in a police cell at the age of eighteen was a personal favourite of Malcolm’s – the boy had been arrested for the theft of his own car, only to be released when his cousin, Marnie, finally admitted that she had stolen the car from him and not the other way around. With a life like that, Malcolm reckoned it was either be laidback or be constantly wound up.

He went upstairs to check on Ben; the kid was trying and, predictably, failing to put the right buttons through the right holes in his white shirt. He always struggled with that, even on his run-of-the-mill school shirt. Malcolm got on his knees and fixed it, tucked him in and helped his stepson into his suit jacket. As Ben was putting on his shoes, he complained, “When can I take this monkey-suit off?”

Malcolm cringed slightly, wondering what Nicola’s reaction to her son’s use of the term ‘monkey-suit’ would be. “When we’re at the hotel, wee man. We’ll find somewhere for you to change.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

Malcolm pushed Ben’s hair over to one side before he left and got changed himself. He did everything without thinking, working completely on what he knew the routine of dressing to be. While combing his hair, he looked in the mirror and reminded himself. “Don’t get drunk. Don’t get angry. Don’t hurt anyone. Don’t fuck it up.”


	2. Annie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Welcome to Storm Caroline, guys! Weather warnings for high winds tomorrow, and then snow and ice for Friday, and snow and ice again for Saturday. This shall be fun. Kind of glad I chose today to put a new starter motor on my mum's car. Leaving it for tomorrow wouldn't have been a great plan!

Annie Tucker was a stern woman. Even at seventy-five, she stood poker-straight, a good five foot nine in height, her thick and now-grey curls framing a face that would have been soft and approachable, if not for the deadpan expression. Verity was standing next to her, shooting an apologetic look at Malcolm as he approached with Ben holding his hand. His anxiety levels only sky-rocketed at the sight of his mother; he had told Annie the bare minimum. She knew very little about Bella and even less about Nicola. She had a nice, simple, cosy retirement in Glasgow – Malcolm hadn’t wanted to fuck that up for her. It was partly his own cowardice, too. He never had been able to tell his mum the whole truth of anything relating to his own life.

He gave her a hug and kissed Verity’s head. “I reckon you’ve got some explaining to do,” Annie said to him. “Thrown on the train at midnight-”

“Mum,” Malcolm sighed, “later, okay? We can talk later.”

Annie glared at him. “Why are you late?”

“Getting Ben ready,” Malcolm lied. He didn’t particularly want to tell his mother he had been delayed at the doctor’s surgery. She would only worry.

Annie didn’t believe him. That was more than obvious. It would have been irritating if he hadn’t already acknowledged that she had every reason not to trust a word he said. “Where’s this granddaughter of mine?” she asked.

“Nicola’s mum’s driving her in.”

“Why didn’t you tell me-”

“I didn’t know myself, Mum! Jesus fucking Christ-”

“Don’t you curse at me, ye wee prick!” Annie cut over him.

Silence fell for a tense moment before Annie’s face cracked into a smirk. Malcolm exhaled all the apprehension caused by his mother’s grilling and allowed a smile. He shook his head slightly; the years they spent apart only made Annie’s sense of humour harder to follow. Nowadays, he was never quite sure if he was in on a joke or if he really was in deep shit.

They made their way into the chapel, Ben always by Malcolm’s side as Annie, Verity, Adam, Erin, Euan and Alasdair dispersed. Time trickled by until Malcolm eventually took a pew, sitting between Jamie and Euan with Ben on his knee.

He looked at his watch with a roll of his eyes. “Only Nicola could manage to be late for this,” he grumbled. He looked over at Jamie. “You must be the only person mental enough to be wearing a kilt in this weather.”

“You know fine my mam would kill me herself if I didn’t,” Jamie laughed slightly.

The click of heels rushed down the aisle of the chapel; Malcolm turned around to find Bella running towards him. She looked alarmed, to say the least, and when she reached him, the first thing she did was hang onto his arm. “Dad,” she hissed. “She’s gone into some kind of…episode. She won’t tell anybody what the-”

“Okay,” he sighed. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

He practically sprinted out of the building, horribly aware of the many pairs of eyes following him as he ran. At the front door, he found Victoria and Aoife holding Nicola Murray upright as she visibly struggled to breathe. This was not pre-wedding nerves. There was no fucking way Nicola was having a full-blown panic attack at the thought of doing the one thing she had been looking forward to for the past five weeks.

“What happened?” he asked Victoria.

Nicola’s mother, however, was lost for words; Malcolm suspected that, like him, she had never seen Nicola fall to pieces on this scale. There was no point in asking Nicola what was wrong; she couldn’t speak. Her phone was on the ground, thankfully protected by its cover. It was left on the call log screen. “Withheld,” he noted quietly. “Nicola?”

When she finally opened her eyes, her face was full of terror. Her eyes were wide and helpless, like the rabbit looking down the barrel of a shotgun, staring straight in front of her.

“She answered the phone,” Aoife finally said. “Held her nerve until she hung up, dropped the phone and this happened.”

Malcolm looked directly at Aoife, the only person giving him any sort of information. “What did she say?”

“Hello. Yes. When? Okay. Thank you for letting me know,” recited Aoife. “That’s it. That’s all she said.”

He frowned. That gave him next to nothing to work with.

“She’s no’ calmin’ doon, Dad,” Bella said. She was clearly freaking out, which didn’t do anyone any good, least of all Nicola.

He reached out and squeezed Bella’s arm, and told her, “Nicola can’t be relaxed if you can’t, okay? So, Bella, take a deep breath, and fucking _calm down_.”

Nicola just wasn’t coming out of this. He could see her going deeper and deeper into an anxiety attack. “Nicola,” he said. “Nicola, look at me.”

But she wouldn’t do it. She would not look at him. Her eyes began to dart around, never resting on one object or one person. Her hands trembled violently. She could barely fucking breathe. Her legs were shaking, so Malcolm put his arms under hers, ready to catch her. And sure enough, she did collapse, her hands gripping the back of his shoulders vice-like.

“Have you got her bottle of stuff?” Malcolm asked Victoria, desperate for anything that might take Nicola out of this state of inconsolable panic.

Victoria’s own hands were shaking; she was probably scared by the very sight of her own daughter right now. But she pulled herself together enough to rifle through her bag, and retrieve a small bottle of Rescue Remedy. She tried to unscrew the lid but she clearly wasn’t able, and Malcolm took it from her.

He opened the bottle and said to Nicola, “Open your mouth.” Her mouth opened rigidly, looking like it was causing her physical pain. He put the liquid in her mouth and gently closed it for her, hoping to a God he wasn’t even sure he believed in that she might be able to come back to him.

Malcolm carefully placed his hands on Nicola’s face; even his touch seemed to calm her a little, her facial muscles relaxing. Her hand rested on his chest, and Malcolm knew she was trying to pace her breathing with his. He deliberately steadied his own breathing while he tried to figure out exactly what could terrify her this much. She seemed more petrified by whatever this was than she was by the fact she had stage three cancer.

Her breathing quieted slowly. “You’re okay. I’ve got you,” he sighed when he was sure she was on her way out of it. “What was the phone call about?”

Nicola finally looked up into his eyes. “Wrong number,” she replied. She toppled forwards and pressed her face into his chest, clinging tightly to his body. Malcolm looked around at Victoria, Aoife and Bella; all three were totally bewildered. That much was evident in their faces. They knew as much as he did: absolutely fuck all.

“Are you still up to doing this, darling?” Victoria asked. She placed a hand on her daughter’s back, but Nicola flinched at the touch and Victoria withdrew her arm, her face betraying her shock. Nicola had never done that before. Even after coming far too close to being murdered, she never startled at the touch of someone she knew loved her.

“Yes,” Nicola said into Malcolm’s chest. “Of course I am. I’m getting married, panic attack or no fucking panic attack.”

Aoife smiled slightly, though she eyed Nicola with a great deal of doubt. Nicola was lying, and everyone knew it. But now was not the time to interrogate her, and he would not mar her wedding day with a fight of his own making. “Then pull yourself together,” Malcolm said, pushing Nicola slightly back so he could look at her face, “and meet me down there at the altar, okay?”

Nicola nodded, her face breaking into a smile. Malcolm kissed her forehead and left her. The digging would have to wait for another time.

* * *

 

The party got rambunctious very quickly. Jamie McDonald’s presence was fuel added to the fire started by Bella Whyte; Malcolm was beginning to sense a pattern here, and reckoned that Jamie and Bella should never be allowed to party together. Never was it a quiet affair. Nicola, to Malcolm’s surprise, was as bad as them. To look at her, nobody would ever have pegged her for a woman with cancer and crippled by pain and chemotherapy.

Bella took the microphone that stood on the stage, just as Annie approached Malcolm with a determined look upon her face. “Okay, everyone!” Bella said. “Pair up and line yourselves up in two lines right down the hall!”

“Take your shoes off,” Malcolm ordered Nicola.

“What?”

“I don’t fancy having your stiletto embedded in my foot!” he replied, knowing his wife far too well to even contemplate doing this with her when she had potentially dangerous weapons on her feet. “She’s about to make us do the Orcadian Strip the Willow.”

“As in-”

“Ceilidh dancing, yeah,” he finished for her. “Get them off!”

Nicola grinned and pulled off her high heels, laying them beside her chair. Slowly, the room parted into two long lines of couples. Malcolm and Nicola ended up with Euan and Bella, Adam and Verity, and Jamie and Aoife. Annie had some how found herself paired up with Julius fucking Nicholson, of all people, further down the group. Malcolm grinned at the thought of Julius’ reaction to being told what to do by a retired Glaswegian nurse; he wasn’t all that sure Julius knew who Annie was.

“We’re gonnae do the Orcadian Strip the Willow!” Bella said with a smile. “So any lassies that don’t want to risk a broken ankle, get the heels off. I mean, we have a retired A and E consultant and a retired nurse with us but I don’t reckon they feel like patching you horrible lot up!”

There was a collective laugh as several women ditched their shoes; Verity kept hers on, Malcolm noticed, as did Bella and Aoife. They, unlike Nicola, probably had control over their feet.

Bella grabbed Euan and shouted, “Couples at the top, it’s round for sixteen.” She demonstrated with Euan, spinning with him, arms crossed and holding one another’s elbows. “And _please_ hold your partner like this, not with hands crossed at the wrist. My stepbrother once broke his arm at the school ceilidh doing it like that!”

That didn’t help ease any trepidation amongst their colleagues. Malcolm looked around him to see many very confused and rather scared expressions.

“Then you go down the line,” she yelled, spinning Malcolm as Euan spun Nicola, “and turn with each of the partners while meeting your own in the middle for four!” Bella turned with Euan and then with Adam, while Euan spun Verity, and they met in the middle again. “When you see the couple get to the fourth couple down, the pair now at the top starts! When you get to the bottom, turn for sixteen again and join the line!”

Malcolm grinned over at Verity, with a glance at Nicola. Though she was ill, she was physically in good form today. He wasn’t entirely sure whether or not she was taking all her medication, but there was little he could to about that at this juncture. Bella didn’t even ask if anyone was ready. She just started the music on the assumption everyone had listened to her. He sometimes marvelled at how she sustained this attitude of giving people one chance to listen, and even more at the fact that she generally pulled it off.

He watched his daughter turn with her husband. Seeing it done at that perilous speed made it all too clear how one might go about breaking a wrist. Bella turned with him while Euan moved with Nicola, and so they began their journey down the line. Malcolm took Nicola, crossing their arms and holding her elbows; the last thing he needed was for her to fall. When Bella and Euan reached Aoife and Jamie, they started to dance.

The room twisted around them as Malcolm stared straight into Nicola’s face. She was alive, and laughing, and still had five left feet, he noted as she stumbled slightly when he released – okay, catapulted – her towards Adam.

Malcolm had forgotten just how much energy this thing required. By the time he reached Annie, who stood halfway down the line, he was in danger of breathlessness. “Enjoying yourself, son?” she asked; she was on the verge of laughter.

He glared at her but allowed her a small smile.

At the bottom of the line, now absolutely fucking shattered, he started to spin Nicola once more, even faster than he had done the first time. She threw her head back laughing, and Malcolm knew that she knew he was doing it on purpose. The sound of her laughter was one of the most amazing noises on this Earth. When they reached sixteen, he quickly kissed his wife as they parted, waiting for Adam and Verity.

Nicola clutched her side; Malcolm tried not to jump to conclusions, as it could well be that she was just breathless from the energetic dancing. However, if ever there was a day Nicola would refuse analgesia, it would be her wedding day. She had been drinking, too, which Malcolm knew even she wasn’t silly enough to do with heavy painkillers.

By the time the music finished, everyone was exhausted but happy. Nicola went to dance with Ben. Annie ambushed Malcolm. “Get it telt,” she said, cornering him into a nearby chair. “I mean it, Malcolm, no more shite.”

Malcolm sighed. “I didn’t know, Mum,” he told her. “Honestly. I knew fuck all until November.”

“They never made contact?” Annie asked, taking a hipflask from her bag. She took a swig and handed it to Malcolm. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “We had to tell Bella the truth, just before Christmas. That was why she got drunk and fucking collapsed on the Forfar road – she was trying to get to Kathleen.”

“And Nicola?” Annie pressed on. “I didn’t even know you were in a serious relationship until it came out in the news that she has cancer.”

“Seriously?” Malcolm raised an eyebrow at her.

“You’re not one to keep me abreast of developments,” she reminded him.

“Mum, I sold my house, you dozy cow,” he laughed. “What did you think that meant?!”

“That you moved house,” Annie said simply.

“Ma,” Malcolm chuckled, drinking from her hipflask, “every time I’ve phoned you since the summer, there’s been a wean there, or Nicola herself! Jesus!”

Annie made a face at him but did laugh. “I just thought…I don’t know what I thought. Your relationships don’t exactly thrive. Fifty years of experience has taught me that nobody can put up with you longer than a few months.” He shook his head, knowing better than to take offence to that. She was probably right anyway.

He laughed again and looked around for Nicola. She was playing with the kids, along with Euan, who was throwing Alasdair about the place by the legs and arms while Nicola watched him like she was about to have a heart attack. Nicola, as she watched the father and child circus act, was knocking back wine like she was dying of thirst, and it wasn’t going unnoticed.

“Um, Malcolm, I don’t think your wife ought to be drinking like that,” Annie expressed her concern.

“There’s something wrong,” he said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “She’s been weird all afternoon. Had a fucking panic attack outside the kirk.”

“You said before she’s always got high anxiety levels, though. Maybe it was just the thought of-”

“No,” Malcolm said flatly. “Aoife and Bella said she was fucking fine until she answered the phone.”

“Oh, don’t pry, Malcolm,” Annie warned him with a grimace. “She’s your wife now. You’re going to have to trust her judgement. If she doesn’t feel the need to tell you, it can’t be that bad.”

“Or it’s so bad she doesn’t want me to know,” Malcolm mused. “She doesn’t trust me.”

“I’m sure she does.”

“She trusts me with her life,” he conceded. “Just not with mine.”

Annie’s gaze snapped over to him. “What? What does that mean?” she demanded.

He met her eyes, and knew he had to tell her. He couldn’t very well tell her scraps of truth about Bella and Nicola and hide the truth about himself, could he? “I’m on antidepressants,” he admitted quietly. “I had a…sort of a fucking breakdown at New Year.”

Annie reached out and took his hand in hers, grasping it as tightly as her old bones allowed. “Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” she said.

“I didn’t want to worry you.” Annie clipped him round the ear. “Ow! What the fuck was that for?!” he protested, raising his voice in indignation as he rubbed his ear.

“‘Didnae want tae worry ye!’” she retorted, dropping any attempt she was making to speak proper English while surrounded by half the Government. “It’s ma joab tae worry aboot ye, ye daft bastard! That’s what mithers dae!”

“Sorry!”

“God, yer a prat sometimes!” Despite this slightly violent reaction, Malcolm was relieved that her objection was not that he had found himself mentally ill, but that he had not confided in her. Annie didn’t pressure him to speak about it – she had learned long ago that it didn’t always do very much good – but she did touch his face gently with her fingers. “Just mind an’ tell me next time.”

That was the wonderful thing about Annie Tucker. She just accepted it. This woman, whose husband committed suicide and whose son never was the same afterwards, simply accepted his problem for what it was, and only asked that he didn’t conspire to hide it from her.

“Malcolm!” Jamie shouted, beckoning him over. Malcolm stood up and went to him. “Nicola’s gonna end up in some state if she keeps up this carry on,” he nodded over at the bride. She was taking up yet another glass, but it was no longer wine she was drinking. “She’s on the vodka now.”

“Fuck me,” groaned Malcolm. He stalked towards Nicola, who was currently forcing a drink on Aoife. Of course, Aoife had a dodgy liver and so shouldn’t have been drinking herself legless, but that was up to her. She knew what her body could take. But Nicola blatantly was on a runaway train here. Where Aoife was drinking to buoy her high mood, Nicola was not. Something lurked in his wife, like a monster clawing inward.

He put his hand on Nicola’s wrist and kissed her jaw. “What are you doing?” he whispered, his mouth still at her ear.

“Having fun,” answered Nicola.

“Go easy, eh?” Malcolm suggested softly. “You want to remember your wedding day, don’t you?”

Victoria approached, and took the glass out of Nicola’s hand. “Darling, just lay off this for a while, alright?”

Nicola glowered at her mother and took back her drink. Victoria was totally confounded by her daughter’s behaviour; it was written all over her face. Malcolm took the glass back out of Nicola's hand and gave it to Victoria. “Dance with me,” he said, holding his hand out to her.

She took it. They slowly stepped and turned with the music, his hand resting on her waist. “Are you in pain?” he asked her. Nicola gazed up at him, her eyes conveying an utter mess of emotion, but he managed to find an answer in it. Yes, she was in pain. “You didn’t take your painkillers, did you?” he sighed, pushing her hair out of her face.

“No,” she mumbled. “No, I gave them a miss. I wanted a clear head.”

“And yet you’re determined to get hammered.”

She smiled slightly. “Malcolm?” she said, her voice full of caution.

“Hmm?”

“Hold me?” asked Nicola.

That, more than anything else today, set off every warning siren and flashing red light in Malcolm’s mind. She _never_ asked for that. Normally, she just took it. But still he put his arms around his wife and inhaled the scent of her hair; she had asked for comfort, and if that was the only thing he could do for her, he was sure as fuck going to do it.


	3. Cheerful Bride/Melancholic Neurotic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, and welcome to my third all-nighter in a row. Insomnia's a bastard.
> 
> To make it better, I have my first ever date in six hours, and I haven't slept at all. Yes, yes, I'm 22 and have never been on a date. I'm a bit pathetic. I know this.
> 
> Word to the wise - this will eventually build into something a wee bit sinister.

They spent that night in the hotel. Victoria took Ella, Sophie and Ben home with her. Euan and Aoife piled Bella and Jamie into a taxi along with the half-asleep children – they had four kids tonight rather than two. Verity, Adam, Erin and Annie were staying in the same hotel, but by the time the party broke up, they were barely fit for a shout of “goodnight” at the lift, while Malcolm and Nicola departed for the stairs.

Nicola was drunk. She hadn’t followed anyone’s advice. Whatever bothered her, she had felt the need to drown it in wine and vodka. On the surface, she was high-spirited, laughing and giggling and falling over herself. But when Malcolm closed the door to their hotel room, she clung to him like she feared he might evaporate. He ran his fingers through her hair, holding her close.

She was nervous. Jumpy. And when she drifted away, she drifted backwards; as she had sat with Alasdair on her lap earlier, not interacting with anyone at all, he could almost see her walking back in time to a place he had never been with her, and could not presume to know. He had watched her drink heavily and lose herself into two different versions of herself: the cheerful bride and the melancholic neurotic.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I have you,” she answered. “How could I not be okay?”

“Nic’la,” he sighed, his face against the top of her head. “What was the phone call?”

She didn’t say anything in response. She only tightened her grip on him.

“Was it anything to do with your treatment?” he asked her. “Was it the hospital, or-”

“No,” she said, looking up at him. “It’s nothing to do with that. Everything is still going ahead as planned.”

Malcolm rubbed her back. This wasn’t anxiety. He knew what anxiety looked like in his wife. It was floundering and indecision and the inability to control herself. It was what happened outside the chapel – that loss of grip on herself, and the mind that calculated every worst case scenario conceivable. But this was different. She might have been drunk, but she still treated him with caution. “You flinched when your mum touched you,” Malcolm said quietly. “You _asked_ me for a cuddle. None of that is normal for you, Nicola.”

Nicola smiled. “This isn’t a normal day.”

That was a fair comment. He accepted that. But it still wasn’t an answer. “Today was supposed to be abnormally happy, not abnormally fucking stressful for you,” he pointed out. “What is it, love?”

She sighed. “Please stop asking, Malcolm. I don’t want a fight.”

Malcolm froze. “Who said we’re gonna fight?”

Nicola stepped back and put her face in her hands. “You’ll keep asking, I’ll keep telling you nothing’s wrong and one of us will lose our fucking temper. It’ll end in one of us storming out, and our wedding night will be ruined,” she said. “So, please, Malcolm, let it lie.”

He wasn’t convinced that she was alright, but he was convinced she was right. Of course she was. This was her telling him the only answer he was going to get was the one she had already given; he knew that if he kept asking, and kept hearing that answer, his temper would flare. And that was not what he wanted. He didn’t want to shout at her. He wanted her to talk to him, yes, but he didn’t want to cause a riot in the process.

Malcolm wanted a night of love and happiness with his wife, before they went head first back into the life they had at present – tense and full of uncertainty, with the cancer’s threat of death hanging over their heads. There were four weeks until Nicola went for surgery, and Malcolm was just trying not to let himself think it would go wrong. It was all he could do not to list the many things that might take his wife from him on that one day, and in the days that would follow. He had to enjoy having her while he knew she was here, because the day when she might cease to be wasn’t all that far away.

“Okay,” he conceded. “Okay.” Her face was still covered, so he took her hands away and tilted her head upwards. “I love you,” he reminded her.

She gave a genuine smile this time as she kissed him. “I love you.”

* * *

 

They woke the next morning happy. Malcolm had, albeit against his better judgement, put Nicola’s bizarre behaviour to the back of his mind. She seemed back to a form of her normal self – not that anything about Nicola could really be considered normal in the first place. He had watched her take her painkillers and her anti-sickness tablets; hangover excepted, she was okay. She acted like she had done nothing strange or questionable yesterday. Malcolm knew that was her way of saying without words that it wasn’t up for discussion, and she would react badly if he did try to discuss it. But if that was what she wanted, and her behaviour had realigned itself to the norm, he could live with that, for the time being.

But for all her lighthearted demeanour, he could see something eating at her, playing on her mind. Their silences, though perfectly companionable, were weighted with the troubled glaze over Nicola’s eyes. It was, of course, normal for Nicola to be preoccupied. Her mind never was where it was supposed to be. That was just part and parcel of her scatter-brained nature.

On the drive home, while stuck in traffic, Malcolm, in spite of himself, did try to work out what had gone on yesterday. It was that phone call; he was sure of that. But what phone call could bring Nicola to her knees like that? The only call of that magnitude she’d ever had was the one Terri took about Katie’s death, and it was Malcolm himself who relayed that message. Clearly nobody had died – there would have been no way to hide that from him, surely.

 “… _all my life I’ve been waiting for you to bring a fairytale my way_ ,” he heard Nicola sing along with the radio. “ _Been living in a fantasy with a meaning; I don’t feel safe; I need to pray_.” How odd. Nicola rarely sang with the radio, let alone staring out the window absentmindedly, as she did now. “ _Why do you play me like a game? Always someone else to blame; careless, helpless little man; someday you might understand; there’s not much more to say, but I hope you find a way_ …”

“Nicola?” Malcolm interrupted her, a bit concerned now. “Everything okay?”

She turned to look at him as he crawled along the road behind the endless stream of cars in front. “That’s how I felt being married to James,” she confessed. “Not just when he went fucking mental, but generally.” Nicola didn’t often discuss her marriage to James. It was a bit of a no-go area. “I didn’t know it at the time, but he…he was bad for me,” she said. “He liked to break me, and he never  _had_ to lift his hands to do it. There are things not even Mum knows about.”

Malcolm bit back his reply. What he wanted to say about James Murray wasn’t pretty at all, and to say it, to get angry, would only deter Nicola from opening up about him. “What was it he did to you?” he eventually asked.

“He just wrecked my self-esteem,” she murmured, wringing her hands. “He would accuse me of cheating and then once I’d proven I hadn’t, accounted for every last moment of my day, he’d say, ‘Oh, you can’t have cheated – you’ve not been with anybody blind, deaf and retarded.’ Now I sometimes wonder if he only ever accused me so he could insult me afterwards.”

Malcolm was sure that was exactly James’ thought process.

“There were times,” she continued, “when we had fucking screaming matches, James cornered me into the back room and locked the door. That was why I took the lock off last year, when Ben reached an age he could be trusted not to eat the washing tablets.”

“But that back room’s fucking tiny!” Malcolm exploded in outrage. “There’s no room even to turn around in! You must’ve been a fucking wreck locked in there, with no way out!”

Nicola let out a humourless laugh. “Why do you think he fucking did it?”

“That’s abuse, Nic’la,” Malcolm informed her. “Why didn’t you fucking say anything?”

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think he was wrong.”

“But you do now?”

“You and I have had some fucking bad rows,” Nicola said, “but you’ve never hit me, you’ve never locked me up, you’ve never accused me of cheating…I know better now.”

Malcolm sighed. “I’d never hit you,” he said. “I’d never turn your claustrophobia on you. And I know you wouldn’t cheat on me.” He left out the part where, once upon a time, he had victimised someone he was supposed to love. That wasn’t who he was now. He didn’t feel he was capable of that now. “Did James hit you? Before Katie died?”

Nicola hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him, and that in itself answered the question. But she eventually opened her mouth and spoke and he trundled to yet another halt on the damn road. “My medical records are a catalogue of twisted ankles, sprained wrists, bruised ribs and concussions,” she said. “He never hit me anywhere anyone could see it. Often he didn’t outright hit me at all. But he was fond of pinning me against walls and knocking me down the stairs.”

So many things suddenly made sense. The fact she was able to hide an intense beating the next day, caught out only because Olly had noticed how many painkillers she took, now didn’t seem such an impossible feat. That Nicola never underestimated the danger James could put her in, that she never tried to defend it, that she never tried to deny James stalked her, now held a whole different meaning to Malcolm. It was intelligence, bravery and acceptance on another level entirely.

“Have you ever noticed the dent in the back of my skull? Near the top of my head?”

“No,” Malcolm said honestly. She reached out and took his hand, placing his finger into a small but most definitely concave part of her skull. “Fucking hell,” he muttered.

Nicola released his hand so he could continue driving. “That was Katie’s tenth birthday, when I was pregnant with Ben. I must’ve been about eight months gone. We took her go-karting – she had a total obsession with it back then – and then begged me to stop at Pizza Hut on the way home, as kids do. James didn’t want to; he was in a bastard of a mood. He always was on the kids’ birthdays. But I was driving, so we stopped and got dinner. When we got home, Sophie had fallen asleep, so I had her in my arms as I got her backpack out the boot of the car. James pulled the boot door down on my head.”

Malcolm took a breath and pushed down his reaction. Nicola was finally trusting him with this information – horrors she had never even told Victoria of – and it was his job as her husband not to do what he so desperately wished he could do. It was up to him to be what she needed, and a bad tempered husband was not want Nicola needed at this moment in time.

Even though he was trying to focus on the driving, he spared a glance over at Nicola, half-expecting her to be in tears. But she wasn’t. Her face was impassive. Unreadable. The worst thing it could possibly be. It could only mean there was worse to come.

“I don’t know why I let him do it.”

“I don’t really think you could’ve fucking stopped him knocking you over the head with the car door,” Malcolm replied. “Not quite how that works, especially when you’ve got a child in one arm and Sophie’s backpack in the other hand.” Nicola’s face remained stony, her eyes still fixed on the road outside. “Did he ever hurt the children?”

“No,” said Nicola. “No, I always managed to stop that, thank fuck.”

“By standing between them?”

“Fuck, no. I never let him get that close. As far as they know, their father never even wanted to harm them.”

“Then how?” he pressed.

“By placating him. Distracting him.”

Malcolm indicated and pulled into the layby they were approaching. He stopped the car, put it out of gear, pulled up the handbrake and looked over at his wife sitting in the passenger seat. “Tell me you don’t mean what I think you fucking mean.” She looked down at her hands. “That amounts to-”

“I was just protecting my kids. If he was content, they were safe. Sex was the one thing I could use to keep him in a decent-”

“But _you_ weren’t fucking safe!” Malcolm shouted. The only thing stopping him from thumping the steering wheel in temper was the risk of the airbag deploying. He did, however, stamp his foot on the floor. His blood finally boiled over.

“This is why I never fucking told you,” she sighed, resting her elbow on the window frame and her head on her hand. “I knew you’d get fucking pissed off at me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just-”

“I’m not angry at _you_ , you fucking muppet!” he yelled at her. “I’m angry at _him_!”

Honest surprise and confusion broke the stoicism of Nicola’s face. “At him?”

“Yes, at fucking _him_!”

“But it was my own-”

“Don’t you even fucking say it!” he bellowed. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

Of all those things she endured, she never truly blamed herself. This was the only thing for which she laid the blame at her own door. She wasn’t stupid; there were rare moments when she freaked out that she fell into the trap of taking responsibility for what James did, but for the most part she knew better. And yet she seemed to really believe that this particular aspect of her first marriage was her fault. “It was my choice to take him aside and let him fuck me.”

Malcolm shook his head incredulously. “The choice was between letting him fuck you and letting him batter the kids!” he protested. “That’s _not_ a fucking choice to you, Nic’la! I know you! Letting him hurt the kids wasn’t a fucking option after Katie died and it was never an option before that!”

Nicola stared at him. “It was complicated.”

“It was fucking nothing of the sort,” said Malcolm. “James might be fucking deranged but he’s not an idiot. He was manipulating you. Coercing you. And I think, deep down, you fucking know exactly what it was. It just hurts too much to admit it, and that’s okay,” he assured her, lowering his voice as he took her hand in his. His anger was not the priority here. The fact Nicola was trusting him with something she had never shared before, something so intimately connected to her, was what was important. “It’s okay that you can’t accept that just now. Because you know what? One day you _will_ accept it, and you will be fucking furious, and it will hurt. But you’ve never spoken about it, so there’s no reason for me to expect you to think of it the way I do.”

Nicola allowed the tiniest smile onto her face. “That counsellor’s done you the world of good. Two months ago, you would’ve lost your head.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes; he leaned over and gently kissed her before he set off back onto the road. His fury was by no means gone. It still bubbled away beneath the surface, enraged by the discovery that James Murray was much worse a man than Malcolm had ever been led to believe. Outward anger, though, wasn’t helpful. It could do nothing but make Nicola anxious; he controlled it, reminded himself that he was better than to frighten his wife, or make her reluctant to confide in him.

When they got home, Malcolm unlocked the door and keyed in the code to the alarm system before it got a chance to let off that hideous, shrill noise that jabbed holes into the eardrums.

He shed his coat and went to the kitchen; he needed coffee, and he guessed that Nicola did too. She wasn’t great with hangovers, and there was only about two hours before they had to go and get the kids back from Victoria. Just as he finished setting up the coffee machine, he felt Nicola’s hand on his arm. “Malcolm?” she said. He looked down at her, fearing that he had done more damage than he thought by letting some of emotion be known. “Thank you.”

“What on Earth for?”

“For prioritising me over your own feelings.”


	4. Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first ever date was a success. Or at least not a disaster. That's a success, right? Anyway, he's a nice guy and I'm seeing him again tomorrow.

Malcolm would have been quite happy to sit with Nicola sprawled across him on the sofa for the rest of the day. In fact, he would have been content never to move from this place. But he had three children who needed picked up from their grandmother’s, and who had been promised Chinese takeaway for tea by a drunken Nicola when she parted company with them last night; they were not children who failed to hold their mother to such promises.

“Come on,” he groaned, patting Nicola’s hip. “Time to get the kids.”

“Hmm,” Nicola mumbled; her eyes remained closed as she turned her head and pressed her face into his arm. She kissed him just above the elbow and said, “You might be a total cunt sometimes, but I’m glad I married you.”

“There’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Malcolm replied.

Nicola chuckled. “You’re good to me,” she elaborated. “You’re good to my mum. You’re good to my kids.”

“Our kids,” he corrected her.

“Exactly.”

Malcolm didn’t answer her; instead, he helped her to her feet, trying not to give any reaction to Nicola’s wince of pain as she stood up. Painkillers helped her, but they didn’t get rid of every last ounce of pain. The best thing he could do was to refrain from responding, because if she saw him taking her pain on board in any way, she would stop showing it, and if she stopped showing it, it could only do more harm to her.

He helped her into her coat, grabbed the keys, switched on the alarm and locked the door.

When they set off, Nicola fell silent once more; Malcolm couldn’t understand just why she was regressing into the past. He could see it happening. And whenever she travelled backwards, the destination wasn’t pleasant. He let her do it for a good fifteen minutes before he decided to interrupt.

“Why are you torturing yourself, Nic’la?” he sighed.

“I’m not.”

“You fucking are.”

Nicola looked down and stared at her hands yet again. “I might be about to die and what the fucking hell has the last twenty years of my life actually been?” she spat. “At the mercy of a fucking infantile husband, trying to raise four kids on my own while trying to be an MP and then a Cabinet minister. Nothing good has come of my existence, except perhaps four children, but one of them is dead and the other three are bound to be fucking scarred for life.”

“Maybe,” Malcolm reasoned, unable to deny that the last twenty years can’t have been much fun for her to endure at times. “But think about what you do have. Take the cancer and James out of the equation for a moment and think about the fact you have three living kids, whether or not they end up with issues, who love you. You’ve got a husband who won’t put you through anything James put you through. You have a mother who, even now, goes to the ends of the Earth for you. And above all, you’re safe, Nicola. You’ve got your safety, if nothing fucking else.”

She gave a rather unladylike snort. “Safety is never guaranteed. Look at Katie.”

He sighed, turning right as he headed to Victoria’s house. “Katie was safe, Nicola. You made fucking sure of it. Nobody could have foreseen what would happen to Katie when she got into that car. These things are totally fucking random. But you kept her safe for sixteen years.”

“And yet she’s dead.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Nobody’s immune to the effects of random events. All you can do is look after the ones you love and hope for the best.” He looked around at her as he parked in front of his mother-in-law’s house and cut the engine. “Where is all this coming from, Nic’la?”

She put out her hand and started to play with his fingers, moving them back and forth. “It’s just one of those days,” she said, “when everything comes back to me.”

“Those days don’t come out of the blue.”

“Sometimes they do,” she reasoned. “Maybe it’s just because I’m worried about my surgery, and I’m scared what might happen to the kids if I’m gone. I’m scared James will try to take them from you.”

Malcolm frowned. “He can fucking try, but I’d sooner let him kill me than let him take the kids. Plus, he’s got a criminal record – he tried to kill their mother, for fuck’s sake.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Nicola whimpered. “He’d give it his fucking best effort, even if the kids don’t want anything to do with him. In fact, that they don’t want to know him might just make him for determined.”

He held both her hands tightly and promised, “I will never let him take the kids. It will never happen. He’s still got eighteen months in jail, and with any luck you’ll still be here when he gets out, but _if_ you’re not, I will keep them safe.”

Nicola looked down, but nodded her head. Without another word, she got out the car, leaving Malcolm completely confused. Why was she thinking like this? James had been the least of her worries – he was safely locked up in prison until next year – with everything else going on, but she had spent today raking over the past, and fretting for the future, and whether or not she would be here to control it.

He followed her into Victoria’s house, and let her pull him aside into the kitchen; he internally moaned. It was never a fun conversation when Victoria took him to speak in private. “Did you get it out of her?” Victoria asked.

Malcolm leaned back against the counter. “No,” he admitted. “She won’t tell me the reason she behaved like that yesterday.”

“She wouldn’t tell me, either,” sighed Victoria as she stood beside him and mimicked his stance. “She always tells me.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Victoria didn’t know that her relationship with her daughter wasn’t nearly as open and honest as she believed. She didn’t know the half of it, and Malcolm couldn’t bring himself to tell her; it was Nicola’s story to tell, was it not? Wasn’t that always Victoria’s line to him when he wanted the truth about Nicola – that it wasn’t her place to tell her daughter’s secrets? In addition, he didn’t know what Victoria knew about. It could have been that she knew about James locking Nicola in the utility room, but not that he had bashed her skull with the car boot door. There was only one thing he was sure Victoria didn’t know about, because if she did, James wouldn’t have been walking and talking.

“She’s worried about her operation,” he allowed. “And that if she doesn’t survive, James will try and take the kids when he’s released next year.”

“That’s out of the question. Any court would see that you and I are more than capable of raising them, and he’s got form for attempted murder. Who do you think would get custody?” she asked.

“We know that,” Malcolm said, “but Nicola’s not thinking like that. She’s thinking she might die and he’s fucking mental.”

Victoria then did something that shocked Malcolm: she leaned over and rested her head upon his shoulder. It dawned on him that Victoria, for all she was bright, tough, extremely intelligent and not to be crossed, she was exhausted by this whole ordeal. It was easy to forget that whatever affected her daughter was bound to take its toll on her; she so rarely let it show. She didn’t have anyone to share it with, being widowed and without a partner. No, Victoria just took it all on her own shoulders and expected herself to carry it, even if it shattered her.

This one gesture was an admission that she wasn’t feeling okay. Malcolm didn’t tell her to toughen up or to be strong. He put an arm around her and let her be close to someone for once.

What caused it, he wasn’t sure he would ever really find out; his best guess was that it was the build up of losing a grandchild, and everything that happened with Nicola, and everything that happened with him. It probably wasn’t anything individual. But Victoria, for the first time since Malcolm had met her, broke down into tears. He had never seen her cry like that; the worst he had seen was the very controlled emotion she had displayed at Katie’s funeral.

He held on to her and let her cry, deciding it was best not to speak. If he knew Victoria at all, there was nothing he could say to her that she didn’t already know. He just had to let her get it out of her system.

Nicola appeared at the door, watching her husband comfort her mother. Malcolm communicated silently with her, seeing her apology in her eyes. He tried to tell her not to be sorry, that she had not done this, that she should not feel guilty. But it was Nicola, and though he was sure she picked up on his silent lecture, she seemed to take very little of it on board. She put her hands over her face for a moment, and then left them to return to her kids.

Victoria’s sobs slowly subsided, and she drew back from Malcolm, grabbed a sheet of kitchen paper and wiped her eyes. “Sorry,” she chuckled.

“Don’t be,” Malcolm said. “Don’t be sorry.”

She gave him a sad smile and walked away, painting a happy face as she packed the kids’ bags back together from the shoes and toys sprawled across her living room.

By the time they got out of Victoria’s house and stopped for Chinese food, night was falling as Malcolm drove down their street. He was a little worried about Victoria, but she was nothing if not sensible, and knew she could speak to him even if she couldn’t speak to Nicola. He almost wished he had told her all the things James had done to Nicola, but he would have been out of line. It wasn’t right to tell Victoria something Nicola had told him in confidence, even if he thought Victoria might handle it better than he would.

He parked the car and took the bag of food from Nicola, who passed it out as she undid Ben’s car seat – Ben always fumbled with the clip, just like he did with shirt buttons. Malcolm stepped up to the door and went to put the key in the lock, but the door was already ajar.

One of the panes of glass, the one nearest the lock, was smashed.

“Fuck,” he muttered. He pushed the door open and walked into the house, looking around him for any sign that anything had been stolen; he listened for any sound of movement, in case there was someone in the house. It was eerily silent. Apart from the broken glass, there was nothing missing, and no obvious sign of anything being disturbed.

“Malcolm?” Nicola asked. There was a crunch of glass as Nicola put her foot down in exactly the wrong place.

Malcolm went to the living room and switched on the light.

Standing on the coffee table were flowers. Lilies. And an envelope, addressed to Nicola in block capitals. No address, no surname. Just _NICOLA_.

Nicola placed a bag onto the sofa and picked up the card with a terrified glance at her husband; she opened the envelope, her hands shaking. It was a card. “‘And They Lived Happily Ever After,’” she read out the words on the front of the card. She opened it. “‘Congratulations on your wedding.’” There was nothing actually written in it – the only thing handwritten was Nicola’s name on the envelope.

“I’m calling the police,” Malcolm said, picking the house phone up off its cradle.

“No!” Nicola shouted. Malcolm startled. That was not the reaction he expected. “No police.”

Malcolm looked around at Ben, Sophie and Ella; they looked petrified. Of course they were scared – someone had just broken into their home, the one place they were meant to be safe. “Nicola-” he began, but she cut right across him.

“No fucking police,” she repeated her original sentiment with more force. “Nobody tells my mum. Nobody tells Bella. Nobody tells Jamie, Verity or Annie. Nobody gets to know. This never fucking happened.”

“What?! Are you-”

Nicola turned around and yanked the phone out of his hand, while he stood there in shock, and replaced it into its cradle. She picked up the card, envelope and lilies and stalked out the front door. Malcolm heard two thuds as she dumped them into the wheelie bin and slammed the lid down. “Ella, get the dustpan and brush and clean this glass up, please,” Nicola ordered her daughter. “I can’t bend that far down.”

Ella went to obey, but Malcolm put a hand on her shoulder to stop her, and set about doing it himself; he didn’t want Ella to cut herself on any of it. By the time he had cleared it all off the floor and thrown it in the bin, Nicola had been to gather plates, cutlery, glasses and a bottle of coke, and was dishing out Chinese food in the living room like nothing had happened. Malcolm put the dustpan and brush away and joined them. Nicola handed him a plate and turned on the television, telling Sophie it was her turn to pick the movie.

“I’ll get that pane of glass replaced tomorrow,” she said to Malcolm.

Malcolm shook his head. He wanted to call the police. He wanted to keep them safe. But Nicola’s reaction to the idea had unnerved him, and he didn’t want to cause her any further distress. He knew that beneath this stony façade, she was scared. If she wasn’t, she was mad.

He recalled with an involuntary shudder how spookily quiet it had been when he walked in. It wasn’t any quieter than it usually was, of course; he was rational enough to know it only felt that way because he had known someone had been in the house. He took a glass of coke that Ella had poured and handed to him.

And it hit him.

The house should not have been quiet. It should have had that fucking ear-splitting, shrill noise blaring through the place, because he had most definitely set the house alarm. When they got back, either the alarm should have still been going, or the police should already have been there; any one of their neighbours would have called either Nicola or the police if the alarm had blasted through the street any longer than a couple of minutes.

When their conversation could be hidden under the noise of _The Incredibles_ , he turned to Nicola and quietly said to her, “I set the alarm when I went out.” She fixed her gaze resolutely on the television. “Whoever was in the house knows the alarm code.”

She didn’t even acknowledge that he spoke. Resigned to the fact she was going to completely ignore anything he said on the matter, he did the only thing that might possibly help anything at this point in time: put his arm around her and try to make her feel safe.


	5. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second date went well. I find it bizarre to happen across someone who actually seems to like spending hours at a time with me. Most people struggle after half an hour.

They returned to work the following Monday. Malcolm would rather Nicola took sick leave as her health steadily worsened with the chemotherapy, but she refused. It was that old thing she had about never breaking her everyday routine, or that of her children. Her ingenious and slightly delusional plan was to keep working until the day before she was due into the hospital for surgery, and to return a fortnight afterwards. Personally, Malcolm thought she was mad to take that approach, but she had been the same after Katie’s funeral – she had returned to work the Monday after, not even a fortnight after having her leg stitched back together and her shoulder relocated.

But she was, at the moment, holding a small press conference with Bella; she had agreed to join her stepdaughter with her new scheme, with Nicola focusing on ways to improve the social development in rural and urban areas of Scotland, and they were now announcing some plans to fourteen members of the press. He watched from the back of the room as they took questions, and did not miss the moment Nicola winced and clutched at her midriff. Bella instantly went to her aid, and she and Glenn helped Nicola into the nearest chair.

Malcolm noted that when they worked together, Nicola and Bella were competent. They did things right. Bella was able to counter the anxious atmosphere around Nicola with her self-assured demeanour, and Nicola’s presence made Bella look more approachable, and less like she might rip a journalist’s jugular out with her bare teeth if they dared word their question wrong.

As the political questions ran out, the press inevitably drifted towards more personal questions. How was Nicola’s treatment going? Did she enjoy her wedding day?

“Information from certain members of Parliament present at your wedding,” said a journalist from the Daily Mail, “suggest that your new husband and Mrs. Whyte have an uncommonly close relationship. Would you care to comment on that?”

Nicola and Bella both looked across the room at him for the answer. He pinched the bridge of his nose; he could be doing without this. Glenn raised his hands slightly, making it clear he had no fucking idea what to tell them to say, or whether or not he should intervene and end proceedings. “Bella and Malcolm are close, yes,” Nicola replied stiffly.

“Before you even ask the question,” Bella said, “I can think of nothing less appealing than a romantic affair with Malcolm Tucker. No offence,” she added with a grin over at Malcolm. He did not smile back. This was nothing to smile about.

Another journalist chipped in, “During an interview last week, Mrs. Whyte, you were asked about Mr. Tucker. Those who watched closely noticed that you appeared to begin to refer to him as something other than ‘Malcolm Tucker’ before you corrected yourself. Would you care to comment on _that_?”

Malcolm walked quietly up the side of the room towards his wife and daughter, cursing Glenn for not halting the conference. Bella’s cobalt blue eyes followed him as he crossed the room, wordlessly asking him what he wanted her to say. Unfortunately, he could see no way out of it anymore. She seemed to gather that and nodded at him. “I took this job sixteen months ago,” Bella began, “having been told I am the safest pair of hands for the Scottish Office. In December of last year, however, we discovered, and with a great deal of shock, that Malcolm Tucker and I are related.”

“Related how, exactly?” the journalist replied sharply.

Bella looked over at Malcolm, who now stood at her side, about four feet from her. She never took her eyes off him. “He’s my father.”

The room fell silent. “I would like to add,” Nicola said as she struggled to her feet, “that none of us knew anything about it when Mrs. Whyte joined the Cabinet.”

Malcolm forced himself not to panic. He never was comfortable with being the subject of the news story. However, he knew every journalist in this room and was sure they understood the bollocking he would dish out if they decided to overshadow the politically progressive with the personally irrelevant. A personal matter such as this being used to diminish events that were actually in the public interest was just shit journalism, and they all knew that.

“Never gets me out of the full Tucker Treatment when I do something he doesn’t agree with, though,” Bella told them all with a smirk. “It never crossed my mind that he would treat me any differently because I’m his daughter – after all, we all know Nicola still gets the ticking-off of a lifetime on a weekly basis, and she’s his wife, for goodness’ sake!” she laughed.

She had done it. She had defused the possible accusations of nepotism and the insinuation that he might overlook his daughter’s mistakes at work. Bella had charmed a room of reptilian journalists into laughing with her. That was half of what made Bella so appealing to the public and the press; she was just like them. She was as sceptical of the government and politics as the next person, and she never tried to hide it. She got away with expressing her opinions frankly because she came from a working-class family and it showed in everything from her accent to her skin to her dress sense.

When they returned to the main DoSAC office, Malcolm leaned against Olly’s desk and said, “That could so easily have gone the other fucking way.”

“What?” Olly asked immediately. “What happened?”

“They started asking personal questions and this brainless fucking wonder,” he pointed at Glenn as he rounded the corner behind Nicola, “didn’t fucking stop them!”

“Oh, God,” moaned Terri. Malcolm ignored her. He didn’t particularly want her opinion.

Glenn didn’t sit down; he approached Malcolm instead. “I was waiting for _you_ to stop them!”

“Oh, yeah!” Malcolm shouted, not quite believing the short-sightedness of a man so experienced in this field. “Yeah, that would have looked great, if I stood up and told them they couldn’t ask fucking questions about _my_ fucking relationship with the fucking Scottish Secretary!”

“I’m Nicola’s advisor, not Bella’s!”

“And Nicola is my wife, so anything that comes out about me fucking reflects on her, and vice fucking versa!” roared Malcolm. “Are you really so fucking obtuse?!”

Olly sniggered. “I think we can safely say-”

Malcolm turned to him and snarled, “You fucking shut it, you fucking sack of shite!”

Bella stepped forwards and said, “Calm down. It’s over and done with, and I don’t think it’ll come out too badly.”

“No thanks to this fucking witless bastard,” he glowered at Glenn. “You’re fucking lucky Bella comes across like a fucking normal human being, Glenn, because if that had been any other fucking minister your balls would be well and truly fucking boiled.” 

* * *

 

Malcolm returned to DoSAC later that day, meaning to tell Nicola that Ella’s school trip had been changed from Wednesday to Friday. He could have called her, or even texted her, but he wanted to see her. When he got to her office, she was hastily putting something under the file sitting on the desk in front of her.

“Ella’s geography teacher changed the field trip to Friday,” he said. “Weather forecast is apparently shit for Wednesday.”

Nicola smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t want to take thirty kids out surveying for them to whinge that they’re cold and wet the whole time either,” she remarked. “That’s fine. Can you just remind me to find her hiking boots?”

“I’ll find them when I get home,” he offered. “I think I saw them the other day.”

He stood behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. She was tense; her shoulder muscles were as hard as stone. He rubbed them gently, and she let out a deep breath he knew she hadn’t even been aware she was holding. Malcolm smiled and bent down to kiss her cheek. With her disarmed, he reached over her and pulled out a brown envelope from under the file. “Malcolm,” she protested. “That’s-”

But he was already taking out the single sheet inside the envelope. It was one rather badly taken photograph. It was him, Nicola, Ben, Sophie and Ella sitting in a café, all of them smiling and laughing, trying to go back to normal after a week of upheavals. It was Saturday, when they had stopped for food on the way back from seeing Annie, Verity, Adam and Erin off at the rail station when they headed back for Glasgow.

He turned it over to find, written in black marker: ‘I CAN SEE YOU.’

Malcolm looked down at Nicola, who was watching him with trepidation. He searched the envelope for any clue of a sender, but the only thing written on it was, ‘MRS. NICOLA TUCKER MP, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS AND CITIZENSHIP, LONDON.’

He exhaled slowly, reminding himself not to lose his head in a public building over something that absolutely had to remain private. “If this isn’t a reason to go to the-”

“I’m not going to the fucking police,” snapped Nicola. She stood up and snatched the photo and envelope out of his hands, tore them up and threw them in the bin. “Whoever is doing this will get bored soon enough if we don’t react.”

“Bullshit.”

“What?”

“That’s a load of shit, Nic’la, and you fucking know it,” he said. “This person was in our _home_ ,” he reminded her. “They’ve followed our children, for fuck’s sake. What is it you’re so scared of?”

She let out a high-pitched, almost unhinged-sounding laugh. “I’m _not_ scared, Malcolm! That’s the point!”

“If you weren’t scared, you’d go to the police and nip this in the fucking bud!” he argued. “The fact you won’t do that tells me you think involving the police will make it worse, which means you are fucking scared! Fuck’s sake, Nicola, _I’m_ scared!” he half-shouted at her. “This isn’t some numpty thinking they’re clever, is it? This is something really fucking-”

“Oh, give it a fucking rest!”

Malcolm stared at her as he took out his mobile phone. “I _am_ calling the police, Nicola.”

But when he put his phone to his ear, a hand wrestled his arm down and took the phone from him. She hung up and clutched the device in both hands, her knuckles white. Terri appeared at the door. “Listen, I know you’re newlyweds and you’re still smoothing things out but could you please keep the domestics to-”

“Fuck off, Terri!” Malcolm and Nicola roared in unison. Finally, something they fucking agreed on.

Terri closed the door behind her, and Malcolm tried to pry his wife’s fingers from his phone. Her grip was vice-like. There was no getting her hands off the thing without hurting her fingers. “Fucking give me my phone back, Nic’la!”

“No, Malcolm!” she said, yanking her hands away from him. “Why won’t you fucking listen?!”

“Listen?!” he shouted incredulously. “Fucking listen?! What is there to fucking listen to when all I’m getting from you is the fucking worst plan of action since Anthony Eden sent the Israelis to Egypt to pick a fucking fight!”

Why was she being so fucking unreasonable about this? Any normal, sane person would have been straight on the phone to the police, begging for help. They would _not_ be nicking their husband’s phone to prevent the police being involved. Anyone with an ounce of sense would be frightened. Indeed, Malcolm’s own fear reassured him that, despite the pressure, he was still a functioning human being. Had Nicola stopped functioning? Was she really, like she had said, not scared by this?  Could she really have shut down like that?

Malcolm tried once more to grab back his phone, to no success – she put her hand behind her back. Nicola turned and started to walk away from him, but he was not going to allow that. Over his dead body was she walking out of this building on her own and unfit to defend herself. He did the one thing he knew would catch her attention. He picked up the landline phone and pressed nine for the external line.

Nicola came back.

Seemingly afflicted with panic, she knocked the phone off the desk and tore the receiver from Malcolm’s hand. “Will you just fucking trust me on this?!” she demanded. “If we involve the police, it will only get bloody worse! We’ll be putting the children in danger!”

He frowned at her. What did she know that he didn’t?

“What would you have me fucking do, Nicola?!”

“Ignore it.”

He shook his head to himself, barely able to believe what he was hearing from his wife’s mouth. “You’ve fucking lost it.” He took her by the wrist and tried to wrestle his mobile phone from her clawed hand, but she was hanging on to it like it was the source of life itself. “Let me have my fucking phone!”

“Promise me you won’t call the police!”

He searched her eyes for an explanation, but there was nothing there except the way she loved and loathed him for trying to protect her. Malcolm was unaware he had taken Nicola by both wrists until he shook her and, at the top of his voice, asked her, “What is it that you know about this, Nic’la?!”

Now she really was scared, and it was no stalker that put that fear into her. It was Malcolm. Though he did not let her go – he could not risk letting her run while she was ill and frightened – he did loosen his grip just a little, so that he could no longer feel her bones pressed hard against his hands. “I know that you have to trust me,” she whispered, barely audible even in the stillness of this office. “I know that these people will not stop for any police, and that the police wouldn’t be able to catch them, never mind stop them. I know that if I contact the police, they will up the fucking ante and any one of the kids, the grandkids, our mothers, your sister, even fucking Aoife, might get caught up in it. I know it will come to an end soon enough, and I will sort it at the first opportunity. I will deal with it, Malcolm.”

“Tell me who’s fucking doing this.”

“I can’t.”

“Nicola.”

“Do you trust me?” she asked him.

He closed his eyes. “It’s not you I don’t fucking trust.”

“Two weeks,” she said. “Give me two weeks to sort it out.”

Malcolm couldn’t bring himself to answer. How could he give his wife his blessing to let this continue, and the potentially put herself in danger? What was so bad that she couldn’t tell him the truth, anyway? “I-” he tried to speak, but the words died on the road between his brain and his mouth. Every part of him protested that if something was awful enough that Nicola refused to let him in on it, surely it was something he simply had to know.

So yet again, Malcolm found himself compromising with this woman he, for better or for worse, loved. He bent over and retrieved the torn photograph and envelope from the waste paper bin. “I will keep this,” he said, “and I won’t call the police _yet_ , on the condition that you tell me every last abnormal thing that happens. Don’t you dare hide it all from me. Anything more severe than this sort of idiocy,” he added, shaking the scraps of paper in her face, “if anyone lays a finger on you or anyone else in the family, then I _will_ call the fucking police. And you let me fucking show you and the kids how to defend yourselves, because I can’t be stuck to you all like fucking Gorilla Glue twenty-four-seven. Deal?”

“Done,” Nicola agreed without even considering it.

He sighed. His greatest wish right now was that she might just fucking tell him the truth, let him call the police, and stop stonewalling him. But that wasn’t going to happen, and the best he could do was protect them and give them the tools to protect themselves.

Marriage, he was quickly finding out, involved making concessions and, though it made him uneasy, he knew there had to be a middle ground on this matter, even if only for the present moment. The risk of a full-scale meltdown from Nicola was obvious, and he didn’t want to do more damage than good when she was absolutely adamant that the presence of the police would fuel the fire rather than starve it of oxygen. Not when she was so unwell, and her bodily health so fragile. This was a balancing act, and Malcolm could only hope he knew his wife well enough not to lose the equilibrium and send them spiralling on a crash course with disaster.


	6. The Letter from Lucky Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> This is where it starts to get complicated.
> 
> Tomorrow is another day with my grandparents, and another multitude of anecdotes of their misadventures. Someone should be writing it all down, in fairness, because it is fucking hilarious, some of it.

Malcolm lay awake most of that night.

There had to be something he could do himself to put an end to whatever the fuck this thing was. But that was the problem – he didn’t know where to start, because he didn’t know the origin of the problem. The only thing he knew was that Nicola didn’t start this. She was so tame and so docile that there was nobody – apart from Malcolm himself – who really ever got furiously angry with her. Definitely not angry enough to start this sort of thing.

The only person he could think of who had a grudge against Nicola was James Murray.

James Murray, however, was in prison. Surely there was a limit to what he could do from prison. He could conceivably have been the one to phone Nicola, but there was no way the break-in and the photographs could possibly have been his doing.

He turned on his side and watched as Nicola breathed. She didn’t look the least bit peaceful. Her face was pulled into a tense frown, even as she slept.

Malcolm realised he was the same way when the sound of his phone vibrating made him jump halfway out of his skin. He rolled over and picked up the phone, grimacing at the screen as it blared his daughter’s name at him. “Hello, Bella,” he answered, sitting up in bed. “What’s wrong? It’s nearly midnight, for fuck’s sake.”

“Dad, you’ve got a problem so big it’s gonnae pull the moon into its own fucking orbit,” she rushed out. “Can I come over?

“Bella, it’s the middle of the night, darlin’.”

“I’d rather explain this where Euan can’t hear,” she replied. “If he finds out, he’ll go and do something that’ll land him in the jail.”

Malcolm sighed and got out of bed. “Aye, okay, then,” he agreed.

“See you in a bit, then.”

Bella hung up.

Malcolm trudged bleary-eyed downstairs, wondering what the fuck was so urgent it couldn’t wait until the morning, and so unpalatable that Euan would react with violence. He really did not need Bella to end up in any kind of crisis while Nicola’s health and head were such a mess. How thin could he stretch himself for the sake of everyone else?

When he heard Bella’s car pull up to the house, he went and opened the door for her before she got the chance to knock or ring the bell. The last thing he needed was the kids awake, or Nicola. She bounded in, her face filled with worry and anxiety as she took off her coat and Malcolm closed and locked the door. “What the fuck’s happened?” he asked her.

“I got my post from Portree,” she said, leading him to the living room. “My neighbour goes in and gets it for me if I don’t get a chance to go up, which I didn’t, because I was here at the wedding. She sent this down to me. It’s from Patrick MacDonald,” she explained to him, handing him a letter addressed to Mrs. Bella Whyte, 34 Rathad na h-Áirigh, Portree, Isle of Skye. “He did time for assaulting a bouncer in a London nightclub last year. He was only in there a few weeks but he seems to have made a fucking impression.”

Malcolm opened up the letter. It was dated a fortnight ago.

_Dearest Bella,_

_How is government? Saw you on the news the other night and was fair impressed with you. Wee tinker lassie done good, eh?_

_I’m on the road right now, floating between the baurie forests. Pitched at the Lucky Star just now, where your grandad set thon Ford on fire in 1982. Sorry I’ve sent this to Skye. I don’t know your London address and I didn’t think it’d be a good thing to send to the Scottish Office. I don’t think they’d be impressed if they happened to read any of it._

_I was in London last week after getting a visiting order from a moich cowie I met in the jail. James Murray. He wanted to ‘employ’ me, but I’ve never actually done what he wanted me to do, nor would I ever do it. It’s one thing to give a bit of scum a beating – completely different to terrorising some lunatic’s innocent ex-wife. I telt him I won’t do it, and no other Traveller will do it, but that’s not to say he won’t get somebody else to do it. He met a load of drole craturs, and half them are out now. Cannae scrieve all the details doon but the cowie’s coichy. That much, I can say with certainty. I think he was halfway there when he went in – something about a kinchin dying? But now he’s completely and utterly aff his test. Lost the place in there, I reckon._

_The bloan’s your stepmother (the fact that Malcolm Tucker’s your father explains so much. Madness must be genetic on his side) and she’s a Westminster politician, so I thought I’d let you know. I don’t know if he knows you’re Malcolm’s kinchin. He might not even know who you are at all. Whatever you do, don’t go to the Hornies. James is mental and can’t be trusted not to retaliate. I know the bloan’s got the shan trouble, but I’d be telling her man if I was you. He might get to do something about it._

_Don’t go doing anything pannified, and don’t let Euan Six Toes anywhere near it. If you’re needing anything we can help with, send a letter to Tot and Joanie in Dunkeld. It’ll get to us – Tot’s got a mouth like the bloody Clyde tunnel, after all!_

_Behave yourself. No scalidified carry on, lass._

_Patrick MacDonald_

Malcolm set the letter down; he believed he had the gist of its content, even through the liberal sprinkling of cant. James had asked a Traveller to bring Nicola to harm. He looked up at Bella. “Who is he?” he asked.

“Mum’s cousin,” Bella said. “He used to set about the likes of the bairn-beaters and the paedophiles back in the late seventies and early eighties. He must’ve told James some stories.”

He put his face in his hands. “What the fuck am I meant to do?”

“Well,” Bella began, rubbing his back soothingly, “I know for a fact none of my lot would ever do that. If nothing else, they’re not stupid enough to try and hurt my stepmother. But Patrick’s right – there’s nothing to say James didn’t find someone who was willing to do it.”

Malcolm was filled with rage more than he was filled with fear. “I want to see him. James. I want to fucking see him.”

Bella snorted. “Like he’s gonnae give us a visiting order.”

“No,” he conceded.

“But,” she continued, “MPs are allowed to make official visits.”

“He’d have to consent, and you can’t really claim it’s a constituency matter. And I’m not a fucking MP. I’m just mug that gets to hold the leash.”

Bella looked around at him, looking like she didn’t really want to make her next suggestion. Malcolm raised his eyebrows, telling her to speak without speaking himself. “We could spin him a lie,” she said. “Write a letter, tell him I’m Patrick’s cousin from the same background, and that you’ve turned on Nicola.”

“No. He’s mental, not fucking thick.”

“He might not know who I am.”

“But he knows who I am, and I think he knows I’d never put Nicola’s life in danger.”

“That’s the only way to do it without breaking the fucking law.”

Malcolm was about to say that he didn’t care about breaking the fucking law, until he remembered he could not risk going to jail himself, and leaving his wife and three children to struggle with James’ madness and Nicola’s illness alone. That would not be at all fair. There had to be another way to get in to see James without breaking the law.

Bella put her hand on his wrist. “We’ll think of something, Dad,” she promised him. She gathered up the letter and put it back into the envelope. “Listen, I’ve got to get back home, but I’ll see you tomorrow and we can work out what to do.”

“We?” he shot back at her. “No, Bella, you’re not getting involved in this fucking-”

“I’m already involved, and I’m more than able for most things!”

“You’re also the Scottish Secretary,” he reminded her, “and if it got out that you’re doing anything less than fucking perfectly legal and moral, you’ll be crucified!”

“I’ve got you to stop that from happening. And besides – I won’t get caught doing anything illegal or immoral.”

Malcolm groaned and ushered his daughter to the front door. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he relented. He didn’t want an argument with Bella where Nicola and the younger kids could hear them, so he leaned down and placed a kiss to her forehead. “Go on. Get some sleep.”

With her gone, he closed the door, switched off the lights and went back up to bed, where Nicola lay with an arm across her face. He gently moved it to prevent her muscles being sore in the morning. She didn’t wake; between treatment for cancer, the stress brought on by the prospect of surgery, and the tension caused by the strange threats of the past week, she was always exhausted by nightfall. She usually was out of it before her head even hit the pillow.

He lay down next to her. His wife moaned something incomprehensible as she slept; the words didn’t come out fully formed, and it sounded more like baby-babble than anything a grown woman would come out with.

Right now, he was trying not to picture James Murray plotting from his prison cell. It only enraged him, and his anger didn’t do anything to help the situation. In fact, he was sure it would only cloud his judgement, and make it more difficult to work out the best thing to do. He tried to think tactically, to find the best way to deal with it, but he couldn’t say which was the right tactic. Patrick MacDonald had a fair point – who knew how many contacts James had wandering around, and who could say what his reaction to police involvement might be? There was a decent chance he-

Nicola let out a scream. A stomach-turning, blood-curdling scream.

Malcolm sat bolt upright and shook her, trying to wake her up; her hands flew out as she tried to strike something that wasn’t there. He tried to catch her arm, but a fist collided with his mouth. “Fuck’s sake!” he shouted. He put his fingers to his mouth to find he was bleeding. He turned the lamp on and got out of bed; he stood over Nicola and grasped her wrists while she was still. Pleading sobs were escaping her as her entire body trembled in fear.

“Nicola!” he said. “Nicola! Wake up!”

When she opened her eyes, she scrambled backwards at the sight of Malcolm standing over her.

The door opened; Sophie stood there with a look of terror on her face. “It’s alright, Sophie,” Malcolm reassured her. “Mum’s just had a bad dream, that’s all. Go back to bed, love.”

Sophie obeyed, and Malcolm briefly found an appreciation for just how much these children trusted him when they left their mother in his care. He sat down beside Nicola, whose face was contorted into an expression of shame and fear. “Okay,” he sighed. He approached her carefully, so as not to frighten her any further. “You’re okay. It was a nightmare. You’re safe.”

Nicola nodded her head cautiously and allowed him to put his arms around her; her head fell onto his chest, and he could feel her breathing was still uneven and ragged. Malcolm stroked her arm to try and calm her, his face pressed against her head.

“What were you dreaming about?” he asked her.

She shook her head and clutched at his t-shirt. “I can’t.”

He kissed her head and let her calm down. Though he was not going to let her go back to sleep without at least an idea of what made her scream like a banshee being dunked in acid, he had to allow her time to settle before he pressed the issue. He ran his fingers through her hair; though she had not lost all her hair, it was thinner than the sometimes wild-looking mess of hair she’d always had.

Nicola eventually settled, her body slowly relaxing in his arms. “Nic’la,” he said, “I need you to tell me what that was, because the noise that came out of you was absolutely fucking petrifying.”

“It wasn’t so much a dream as a memory,” she murmured.

“Tell me.”

“The night Katie died.” Malcolm exhaled sharply, but remained otherwise quiet, to let her continue if she wanted to. “When James did his best to break every bone in my body. I haven’t really thought about it until recently. Guess I did my best _not_ to think about it. I even skipped over that night during counselling. I never acknowledged just how scared I was. I honestly thought he was going to kill me, Malcolm,” she said. “I remember just telling myself, ‘Don’t scream. Keep it in. Don’t wake the kids up. Don’t make them watch this. Just get out the door.’ That was the only thing that gave me the strength to get up and run.”

Malcolm closed his eyes for a moment and reminded himself not to say what he was thinking: that she was going back to this because she knew James was still a very real threat to her, and that this was probably exactly what James wanted to achieve. But for now, he couldn’t let on that he knew that. At the moment, he could not tell her that James had, probably unwittingly, let at least the bare bones of his intentions to get back to Bella through a relative.

“And when I called you,” said Nicola, “I didn’t know why it was you I called. I certainly didn’t want to tell you what had happened. But you were the one person who, even if I drove you mental, would stand between me and him if he found me that night. Even back then I knew that. And when I saw you get out of that car…I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see anyone in my life. You still called me a fucking idiot, and you still thought I was mad, but you didn’t think twice about holding me when I burst into tears,” she explained. “I don’t even think you know how much that meant to me. You gave me your coat and hugged me, and I think I fell a little bit in love right there and then. This man who normally didn’t show any care for anything or anyone, and his first instinct seemed to be to make sure I wasn’t going to freeze to death, and he held me while I cried. Your body was so soft, and so warm, and I remember wishing you would never let me go. I was terrified, obviously, but I couldn’t help but fall for you.”

He pulled them gently back until they were lying in bed once more, holding her as she cuddled into him. This was an insight into his wife that Malcolm rarely got. It was not something she did, to relive things in great detail, and to explain how it made her feel. She preferred to simply push past things of that magnitude, while overthinking the insignificant bullshit that occurred in between. So, he had never known that she felt so much about that one moment in time, or that it was that moment that she decided he was worth loving.

Nicola’s fingers caressed his face, trailing down his neck and his arm until their fingers were interlocked.

“You never blamed me.”

“You never were to blame,” he told her. In this instance, it really was that simple.

He reached over her head and turned off the lamp. Nicola said, “You know, I fell in love with a man who was the total opposite of the one I married. James was composed in public, and always nice to everyone else, and neglectful and abusive in private. You might behave like a fucking disgruntled barracuda in public, and you have half of Westminster hiding behind desks to avoid you, but in private, I don’t think I could have asked for a better husband, or a better dad for my kids.”

Malcolm kissed her cheek. “I think you need to go back to sleep, my love. You’re rambling.”

“I just wish you’d learn how to take a fucking compliment.”


	7. We're a Long Time Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the wonderful world where it's 4.40am, I've spent the day at my madcap grandparents, and been tortured with present-wrapping, and I still haven't got it in me to sleep. Though I think it's partly the pain in my hip after falling on the ice; I fell onto my right hip, which is already weak, and I'm starting to worry I've done actual damage. I may go to the doctor if it doesn't subside.

It was the next morning that Malcolm found himself in Bella’s office. They had been engaged in a hushed battle of cunning for ten minutes now; Malcolm was somewhat startled by Bella’s wilful disrespect for the law when it came to protecting Nicola. “My stepbrother did six months in Barlinnie for supplying forged documents,” Bella said.

“Fucking hell, is there anyone in your family who _hasn’t_ seen the inside of a police cell?!” Malcolm exclaimed.

Bella grinned. “Says the man who got done for drunk cycling,” she answered. Malcolm glared at her but conceded the point that he wasn’t really the one to comment on people making stupid decisions. “Anyway. We could do it this way. We could find James’ lawyer, nick their identity cards and James’ prisoner information and send them to Calvin to alter. He’d manage to get it done and sent down to us in under a week.”

“No,” Malcolm said for what felt like the twentieth time in the last ten minutes. “And anyway, the prison scans everybody’s fucking fingerprints.”

“You’re not leaving me with many options, Dad,” she snapped. “I know you hate the idea, but to get in there without breaking the law, we need a visiting order. To get a fucking visiting order from that lunatic, he’s got to think we’re on his side!”

“Look, Bella, even if I _did_ agree to this, we still need his prison number, which we _don’t fucking have_!”

“Patrick has it, or he wouldn’t have been able to visit, would he?”

“The man’s somewhere in the middle of fucking nowhere, Bella! He’s obviously got no phone, or he would’ve just phoned and told you everything! He’s got no fucking address, either. We can’t even send him a letter.”

“Nah, it’s the Perth market on Saturday and Dannah makes jam every single month. She’ll have dragged him up to Dunkeld to use Tot’s cooker. Nobody likes jam that tastes like camp reek.”

“You realise I’ve got no fucking idea who Tot and Dannah are, don’t you?”

Bella laughed, the sound like musical bells breaking the anxiety in the air. “Count yourself fucking lucky!” she chuckled as she picked up her mobile. “Fuck, what’s the Dunkeld code? I got so used to ringing from the Amulree phone box.”

Malcolm moved her by the waist, out of the way of her computer, and Googled it. “Oh-one-three-five-oh,” he said.

She pressed those numbers into her phone followed by the six numbers that could connect her to that one phone in Dunkeld. “Aye, Tot,” she said. “Whar’s Patrick? Well, he wis doon here mangin’ tae some coichy auld scaldie fae the jyle, an’ he’s goat the cowie’s jyler number.”

Bella held her phone away from her ear and winced as Tot bellowed, “PATRICK! GET YER ARSE UP INTAE THE KIER AN’ MANG TAE YER COUSIN!”

Malcolm looked at the phone and then to the resigned grin on Bella’s face, and hoped with all his heart he would never meet Tot. “He’s out on the street, washing the car,” Bella explained in perfect English. “She’s just opened the window and shouted on him.”

“Christ, it’s like Glasgow in the sixties all over again,” Malcolm smirked as he sat down in Bella’s chair, recalling how, at the age of five, he had been allowed out to play to get out from under his parents’ feet, on the condition that a heavily pregnant Annie Tucker would roar orders out the kitchen window at him for the whole street – and, indeed, half of Glasgow – to hear. It was simply the way of things.

“Aye, Patrick!” Bella said. “Aye, braw! D’ye still huv Murray’s jyler number? Malcolm’s gonnae send a letter but wur needin’ the scaldie’s jyler number.” She clicked her fingers at Malcolm and pointed to the pad of sticky notes on the desk; he realised then that was something only she and Nicola would ever dare do. He passed her the sticky notes and a pen, and watched as she wrote down James’ full name and prisoner number. “Ta, Patrick. Aye, wur in the work the noo but if ye phone the nicht, ye cin mang the hale lot. Ach, ye ken, moich tae the world but gettin’ oan wi’ it,” she said with a grin at Malcolm. He had learned enough cant to know she was talking about him and his erratic behaviour. “Ma’s fine. Mind you, she’s gonnae gie thon buck cowie o’ hers a mowden if he doesnae halt the pannified cairry oan. Aye, Nicola is…well, she’s Nicola. Bloan’s a wee bit moich hersel’. Aye, gettin’ it oot a fortnight next Monday.” Malcolm rolled his eyes and leaned back in Bella’s chair. She fired a glare at him. “Patrick, I’m needin’ tae bing avree. Aye, mang the nicht. Aye. Cho!”

When Bella finally hung up the phone, Malcolm said, “Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph! Why don’t we just write a blow by blow account of every day and post it up to him?! Fuck me!”

She pointed away with her thumb as an order for him to move, but he refused. There was no verbal request for him to vacate her chair; her first endeavour was to physically drag him to his feet, so he pulled all his weight away from her. “Dad, fucking grow up!” she protested. He heard the repressed laughter in her voice as she heaved backwards, trying to shift his weight. She was much smaller than him, but she possessed a great deal of physical strength; without the force of him leaning backwards, she would have thrown him to the floor with ease. He didn’t doubt that at all.

To be immature, to play the part of the boisterous dad, was freeing. It served as a reminder that James Murray did not rule his world, and that Nicola’s illness would never dictate everything that he was. This feeling was the one he knew to hold on to when darkness came, because this was to feel alive.

Bella grabbed his hand and pulled him with a huge force. With a grin, he counted down.

Three.

Two.

One.

And let go of her hand. She flew backwards and landed squarely on her arse on the floor. “You’re an arsehole, Dad!” she informed him, though she did so through stifled giggles. Malcolm chuckled and helped her to her feet. When she stopped laughing, Malcolm was startled to find her staring up into his face with a frightening intensity. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Bella closed her eyes for the briefest second and shook her head. “There’s the biggest lie ever told,” she said.

She reached up and put an arm around Malcolm’s neck, and dragged him down into a hug that gave him an uncomfortable reminder of the foot of difference in their heights. He couldn’t recall Bella ever doing this. Their relationship was not a tactile one – at least while sober – and she did not embrace without reason. She would give a kiss on the cheek or a quick parting hug, but it was not at all like her to envelop him in an embrace loaded with real emotion. Malcolm knew that, though she had recently taken to calling him ‘Dad’ and had involved him in her life, Bella was not accustomed to having a figure, whose name wasn’t Euan Whyte, with whom she could drop her barriers. It didn’t seem to matter to her that they had known each other over a year; after all, for a year he had been a mere colleague, and sometimes a friend. This was her first experience, after growing up with a stepfather with whom she never quite saw eye to eye, of having that paternal presence in her life.

With all that in mind, Malcolm took this opportunity to hold Bella close. He put it all – James, Nicola’s cancer and mental state, his own mental health, this fucking government – out of his view. He focused on this one woman in his arms. This disorderly, wilful, wickedly clever, unconventional young woman, whose edges were untrimmed and whose knack for survival knew no bounds.

“What was that for?” he eventually asked her.

Bella quietly laughed. “You’re suspicious of a fucking hug now?”

“I just want to know what I did to deserve it.”

“I don’t need a fucking excuse to hug my dad,” asserted Bella. “I thought you could do with it, so I gave it.”

She released him. Malcolm said, “What am I supposed to do about all this, Bella?” That moment of a clear head had gone, as his focus left his daughter and wandered to everything else.

Bella groaned in frustration. “You’re supposed to fucking trust me and let me help,” she answered. “And you’re supposed to swallow your pride and lie to save your wife. _We_ are supposed to do whatever we can to protect her, and if that means letting James think we want her dead, then so fucking be it.”

Malcolm gazed at her, struggling to believe what he was hearing. “Why are you so fucking hard?”

Bella sat down in her chair, her eyes burning a hole through her desk. The look on her face made Malcolm regret asking, but after she gathered her thoughts, she looked up at him, locking her eyes onto his. “Has anyone ever told you what it means to grow up a Traveller?” she asked. “Did my mum ever tell you?”

Malcolm stepped towards her, curious to hear what she had to say. “No.”

“When you’re a Traveller,” she began, “you hide about ninety percent of who you are. You’re backwards and you know it. You don’t belong anywhere. School is nearly the scariest place on the planet, second only to the camp you’ve pitched just that wee bit too close to a pub on a Saturday night. Your only expectation of the outside world is that they will hate you, purely because of what you were born. Your ethnicity is synonymous with dirt, stupidity and criminality. Words like ‘pikey’, ‘gypo’, ‘tink’, ‘mink’…they’re thrown around as insults. And the strain on your grandparents gets to them every so often, and they erupt into these hideous, violent fights, knocking lumps out of each other. Each one gives as good as they get because they’re just so _angry_. They’re angry they can’t keep their children and granddaughter safe, fed and warm. They’re still angry about the baby son they lost to the elements. And they’re tired. They’re tired of struggling to survive in a world that doesn’t want them to. Because they can’t survive, you end up working when you should be at school. You settle in the winter to clock up some school hours, and soon enough, you’re praying for the springtime, because school is a fate worse than death. It reminds you just how much easier it is to endure twelve hours in a hot berry field than six hours in a schoolroom. Your teacher assumes you’re stupid without giving you the chance to prove yourself. You’re forced to name just because she needs to know you know what animal begins with the letter ‘s’. And then you get to secondary school. You try to keep your head down. You’re isolated. And then, one time, because you don’t know it for what it is, you mang the cant in front of your classmates. That’s it. One boy tries his best to break your ribs. Another starts groping you because you’re a ‘gypsy whore’ and he’s entitled to you. Every time he and his stupid pals do it, it goes further, but what can you do about it when you’re fourteen and four-foot-ten? A girl in the year above you shoves you down the stairs and you split your head open, but you can’t report her because the headmaster assumes you picked the fight. And then you’re in fifth-year, and one stupid incident cuts it for you. A first-year, a _first-year_ , throws his lunch at you. And that’s the end of it. You leave school because, even though you love to learn, you can’t endure being there anymore. And see by the time you’ve left the school? Well, you know what people are capable of, so you revert back to your grandparents’ tactic after trying to convince yourself you can do it differently. You make yourself tough, and you harden yourself to the outside world in the knowledge that it hates the very core of what you are. In the end, you decide you’ve got to be unbreakable, no matter the situation. But when you see injustice, it boils your blood because you have been that person. You know what it means to be on the wrong side of someone every day of your life, and you wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. And if you can protect just one person you love from going through the hell of systematic abuse, there’s not much of a limit to what you’ll do for them.”

It was the first time he had heard Bella speak to him for any length of time in English, and without swearing. She was lost somewhere he had never been – somewhere he should have been – and he couldn’t help but feel like she deliberately used English to distance herself from it. Though he knew the racism existed, having had his own brother-in-law speak out of turn at the dinner table, the side he had seen to Bella’s culture had been the freedom to roam and the intense bonds of family. The ugly side was not something he had witnessed in any explicit detail.

She had never been candid about how she grew up, aside from the odd throwaway comment about her appearance or her temper.

“Bella, I-”

“Tell you what,” she talked over him, “I’ll write out a letter to James Murray today and you can check it before I send it tomorrow. If you don’t like it, we can change it until it’s something you can live with.”

He was dismissed. There was no doubt about it. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay. Thank you.”

* * *

 

It ate away at Malcolm, even as he cooked dinner and helped the kids with their homework while Nicola slept on the sofa. Even when his mind was elsewhere, it lingered on Bella’s frank summary of her experience as a young girl. And after he put all the children to bed and woke Nicola to take her to bed too, he could not push it from his conscience.

In silence, both he and Nicola started to get changed and ready for bed, until Nicola finally spoke. “Malcolm, what’s wrong with you tonight? You’re lost in your own little world.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated that same lie he had told Bella.

“You’re not.”

Malcolm avoided facing at her, because he knew all too well that if she saw the look on his face right now, the game was up, and she would get it out of him with little to no effort. Nicola, however, took the choice from him when she stood right in front of him. She hadn’t even bothered to dress herself properly, standing there in her pyjama shirt and knickers, the bottoms still in her hand. “Nicola, I’m tired. Just let me go to fucking sleep.”

“Please, just tell me.”

Malcolm sighed. “I spoke to Bella today.”

“You speak to Bella every day.”

“She told me what it was like for her, growing up and that,” he said.

Nicola placed a hand on his chest. “I’m guessing it wasn’t all sweetness and light.”

“Far fucking from it,” Malcolm retorted. “I should have been there for her, Nic’la. I should’ve been there, protecting her from all that.”

“If you knew about her, I’m sure you would’ve been there,” said Nicola. She said that without any hesitation, so sure that he was the man she knew. “It’s not your fault.” She seized him by the shirt and tugged him closer to her. “And now, you’re a good dad. You’re a good husband. In spite of all your flaws, you’re a good man. The fact you feel so shit about not being there for Bella is the evidence of that.”

Malcolm searched her eyes for the lie, only to see she meant every word.

“Bella was born into a world we can’t begin to try and put ourselves in. She should never have had to go through whatever racist fucking shit she was put through, Malcolm, but you can’t change that. You just have to be her dad now. It’s as simple as that.”

“But if I’d been there, I could have-”

“Don’t torture yourself with what you never got the chance to do,” Nicola advised him sternly. “Do what you have the chance to do now. We’re a long time dead.”

Malcolm closed his eyes and hung his head. She was right. Of course she was fucking right. He could do nothing about anything that happened to Bella back then. All he could do was be what she needed now. He knew that. His head knew that. Sometimes, though, his heart needed to be told that his cold logic was not cruel, but sensible; Nicola was the one who knew how to get that message over.

She kissed him and, even though he knew the world was topsy-turvy, everything around him settled. The prospect of everything that could go wrong evaporated, his mind occupied by his wife’s kiss deepening; nothing was okay, but that didn’t matter when he had her here with him. Nicola pulled away a little and mumbled, her mouth still touching his, “I’ve had a power nap, you know.”

He smiled. “You’re nothing but a fucking torment, Nicola Tucker,” he accused.

“Oh, well, then,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll just put these on,” she suggested, holding up her pyjama bottoms. She pranced around him and started to clumsily lift her legs into her trousers, until Malcolm grabbed her around the waist and they tumbled backwards onto the bed. The sound of Nicola’s laughter after hearing her scream so desperately last night lifted Malcolm’s spirits, if only for tonight.


	8. Recovery Position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's been roped into stewarding a Christmas party? Yep. You guessed it. This mug. So when I leave the house in about 15 minutes, I shall be spending the next six hours reminding drunken morons where the toilets are, and that they can't take their drinks out onto the street when they go for a smoke. Yay me.

_Dear Mr. Murray,_

_A couple of weeks ago, you asked a favour of a cousin of mine from Perthshire – you had spent time with him in prison when he did a short stretch last year. He refused, because it wasn’t compatible with his morality to do what you needed. Patrick is funny like that; he draws his lines in the most awkward places._

_After some consideration, I have decided to offer up my cooperation, and that of Mr. Tucker, who has found married life to be nothing short of intolerable. We are in a position to help. With our geographical proximity and my connections to certain people, it could be achieved inside a week._

_However, we would need to visit you in prison to gain the necessary insight into the details of what’s required to help you. If you consent to this, please send a visiting order for us both, to be executed at the same time. Our details are attached on a separate sheet of paper._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Bella Whyte_

Malcolm placed the letter down on his desk and put his face in his hands. He hated this. He hated having anyone think he would ever want to help James fucking Murray in his fucking plot to destroy Nicola. But Bella, he feared, was right when she said there was no way to gain access to James without either breaking the law or letting the man think they were on his side.

He had to give Bella credit for this letter, though. It was cryptic enough that if it was the one to be randomly opened, it would be difficult to work out the magnitude of what was going on. “I fucking hate it,” he complained, “but it’ll do the job.”

When he looked, he got an uncharacteristically sympathetic smile from Bella. “I know it’s not something you want to do,” she replied. “But you don’t have to keep it up if we get to see him. This is purely to get in the fucking door, okay?”

In his anger the other night, he had expressed his determination to visit James Murray face-to-face. Now, though, he wasn’t sure if that was something he could fucking hack. Would he be able to keep his temper? Or would he see the man’s face and lose control of his hatred? Malcolm realised now that he never wanted to lay eyes upon James ever again. He didn’t want to see the man who had tormented the woman who now was his wife. But if he was to have any chance of finding out what the end goal of this crazy game was, he had to speak to James; he was the one behind it all, according to Patrick MacDonald.

“I’ll post it on the way back to my office, okay?” she said.

“Yeah,” he sighed, as he picked up the letter and handed it to her. She nodded, folded the letter and put it into the envelope she had prepared.

She was different today. Malcolm was a bit worried that after opening up to him, she was now shutting him out, whatever her reasoning might be. “Bella, listen,” he began, standing up and crossing the room to her. “What you said yesterday, about being a fucking Traveller-”

“You asked a question and I fucking gave an honest answer,” she said. “That’s the end of it.”

“But-”

“It’s not up for fucking discussion,” she snapped.

“And if I learnt fucking _anything_ last year,” he answered heatedly, “it does nothing but fucking damage to pretend these things never happened! Look what it’s done to Nicola! Look what it’s done to _me_ , Bella!”

Bella gave a strange sort of smile, the kind that could not be interpreted by mere mortals. “I only told you those things because you asked me what made me so hard. It’s nothing to worry about, Dad, honestly. Everything we go through in life is a trial of who we are and a contributor to who we become, and some people are born into the deep end. That’s all I was saying.”

Maybe he was paranoid, or maybe it was a paternal instinct, misplace or otherwise, but Malcolm still was not convinced that the shutters hadn’t gone up between him and Bella. Though she was no less amiable, and she still showed as much affection as she ever did, she seemed more careful somehow.

He didn’t get the chance to pursue the matter, however. His phone rang. “Hello,” he answered, still not taking his eyes off Bella to check who was calling.

“Malcolm,” Glenn’s voice sounded down the line, “there’s something wrong with Nicola. She’s in a lot of pain, but she insists she’s taken all her medication today. Olly tried to get her to get medical help, or at least rest, but she won’t stop. She’s turning whiter every bloody minute.”

A wave of panic flooded Malcolm. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted her to fucking work with advanced fucking cancer. “I’ll be over in a minute,” he said. He didn’t give Glenn time to reply; he hung up and lifted his coat from its stand, put it on and headed towards the front door of Number Ten. He could hear Bella’s heels clicking behind him, following her father onto the frozen street.

“What’s wrong?” she asked after him.

“Nicola,” he said, trying to walk as fast as he could while not abandoning Bella on the street. “Glenn says she’s in severe fucking pain and she won’t sit down.”

“See thon bloan?!” grumbled Bella.

When they got to the DoSAC building, Malcolm realised Bella had followed him all the way over and, looking at her as he called the lift, he knew she wasn’t going to be dissuaded from checking on her stepmother. He wasn’t even going to try and tell her that things would be fine and that she should go back to the Scottish Office; he didn’t know whether or not anything was going to be fine. To be optimistic when a cancer patient took extreme pains like this was, in Malcolm’s view, idiocy.

It was the longest lift journey he had ever taken. He wished he had taken the stairs – if he had, he probably would have been with his wife by the time the doors opened onto the right floor. To his frustration, when he found Nicola in the main DoSAC office, she was pacing the room trying to think up ideas for policy. Glenn had been right when he had told Malcolm Nicola had turned white.

Terri seemed to be going along with Nicola’s restlessness, probably because she was a fucking moron. Glenn was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, looking like he might force her into a chair himself if she didn’t stop this soon. Olly was pacing alongside Nicola; Malcolm could tell from the look on his face that he did so only to try and catch her if she collapsed at all. “Nicola,” Malcolm said. She turned around, having been walking with her back to him at that point. “Will you fucking sit down?!”

“Oh, I’m fine, Malcolm,” she waved away his concern.

Bella rounded on Nicola. “You look like you’re gonnae pass out!” she exclaimed, taking a few steps towards Nicola, who rolled her eyes at the suggestion. “Will ye just sit yer arse-”

“Bella, I’m alright,” Nicola repeated. “I’m pacing to distract from the pain. The pain is to be expected.”

“Not the fucking state you were in ten minutes ago!” Olly shouted; Malcolm suspected he had been struggling to hold any patience with Nicola’s behaviour, but had managed to keep calm to prevent her getting upset. Now, though, that seemed to be out the window. “I don’t care what you think, Nicola – if you’ve taken those bloody painkillers and you’re in _that_ much agony, something is not fucking right!”

It wasn’t often Olly – self-centred, arrogant, immoral, ambitious Olly – fought for something that was not for his own gain, and that he now did could not be a good sign. It meant he was worried, which meant he cared; he had to see an inordinate level of distress before Olly actually gave a single fuck about what happened to another person. It made Malcolm both curious and terrified to know how Nicola’s pain had manifested itself when Glenn called.

Malcolm internally groaned. This was what Nicola did. She pushed past pain, carrying on regardless. Something as trivial as physical pain couldn’t really stop Nicola’s life; he had learned that when James battered her, when James tried to kill her, when she had hidden cancer from him, when she had refused to take her painkillers…he knew this about his wife, and yet it continued to both surprise and frustrate him.

He noticed now that Nicola walked with her right arm across her abdomen, her hand clutching at her suit jacket on her left side. She was in pain – immense pain – or she would not have been doing that.

“Nicola, stop!” bellowed Malcolm. “Just fucking stop!”

Everyone in the office looked around at him. Nicola did not stop. She merely changed direction, now pacing across the room rather than along it. And Malcolm, as infuriating as it was, knew she would not stop. When she faltered for the briefest moment, her face drained whiter than he could ever have imagined possible. Even that did not stop her.

Malcolm had had enough of this already. He grabbed Olly’s desk chair and wheeled it over to her, trying to wrestle her down into a seated position. As soon as she stopped, she yelled out in agony, hanging onto Malcolm’s coat as he tried to balance her. “I can’t sit still,” she moaned. “It hurts too much!”

Nicola struggled upright and pushed Malcolm gently away from her.

Now that he could look into her eyes, he could see she was panicking. She just didn’t want to face the idea that something was seriously amiss, because merely considering it as a possibility riddled her with anxiety and fear. He watched as she tried to focus on his face, her eyes shifting as she failed to fix her gaze on him.

She paled into a horrifying shade of greyish-white. Before anyone could do anything to intervene, she crashed to the floor with a thump.

Bella reached her first, checking her pulse while shouting, “Call an ambulance!” Malcolm instantly took out his phone as Bella put Nicola into the recovery position.

“Hello, emergency services. Do you require the fire, police or ambulance service?”

“A-ambulance,” Malcolm stammered, the sight of his unconscious wife stripping of his ability to think clearly.

“I’ll just connect you now.”

There was a short dial tone before a second person, a man, answered, “Ambulance Service here. Could you tell me your name and the address of your emergency?”

Malcolm struggled to align his thoughts as he got down on his knees beside Nicola. “I’m Malcolm Tucker. We’re on the third floor, Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship, Whitehall, London,” he said. It was almost like he wasn’t the one speaking – he didn’t know where he had managed to retrieve that information from.

“Okay,” the operator said. “Can you tell me exactly what’s happened?”

“My wife,” Malcolm replied. “My wife’s collapsed.”

“Can you tell me how old she is?”

“Forty-five.”

“Is she conscious?”

“No,” Malcolm forced out, “no, she’s passed out on the floor.”

“Is she breathing?”

Malcolm leaned down and placed a hand on Nicola’s chest, and his ear to her mouth, and calmed slightly to find she was indeed breathing. “Yes. Yeah, she’s breathing.”

“Alright,” said the operator. Perhaps he sensed Malcolm’s fear, because he changed his tone to one of reassurance. “Can you describe what happened to your wife before she collapsed?”

“Uh, I got a call from her colleagues,” Malcolm recounted. “They said she was in severe pain – abdominal pain – and that she was white as death. I got over here and she screamed with the pain. Told me she was too sore to stand or sit still. Then she lost all her colour and hit the floor.”

“Does she have any underlying conditions?”

“She has stage three ovarian cancer.”

“Okay, I’ve sent an ambulance to you,” the dispatcher said, “but I need you to stay on the phone until they get to you, alright? Now, can you tell me if your wife has hit her head when she collapsed?”

Malcolm put his fingers through Nicola’s hair, checking for any cuts or bumps; apart from that old dent, there was nothing. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, there’s nothing here for her to hit her head on.”

“Is there any sign of convulsions? Twitching, seizing, shaking?”

“No,” Malcolm replied. “She’s still.” He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and ordered Olly, “You. Get downstairs and meet the paramedics at the fucking door.” Olly didn’t argue. He looked too shocked, too scared, to argue that someone else could be doing that. Malcolm took Nicola’s limp, pale hand in his, startled by the lack of the normal electricity that always seemed to pass between them.

“Is your wife still unconscious?”

“Yes.”

And even as the operator told him there was an ambulance three minutes away from them, Malcolm had to swallow the demand for them to hurry the fuck up. He looked up at Bella, who was busy taking her coat off and rolling it up to put under Nicola’s head. She placed a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder and reminded him, “You’re okay, Dad. You’re doing fine.”


	9. Dr. Tymoshenko

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, I meant to do this last night. However, one of my brother's men didn't show up for work and he asked me to step in. Then the guy showed up over an hour late, and I let him stay and help, since I was left in charge of that section of the venue. I ended up sacking him for starting an unnecessary fight in which I got a lovely smack to the face. It was a great night - dragged into work at the last moment, got a thump to the face, sacked my brother's employee. I should have just pretended I didn't see my brother's message from the very start.

“You can’t take her down in the lift!” Malcolm protested. “She’s claustrophobic!”

One of the paramedics, a woman in her late twenties, stared at him like he had lost his mind. “Sir, your wife is unconscious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an unconscious claustrophobe having a panic attack,” she said, though her tone was not unkind. She probably dealt with relatives like him daily. When he reminded himself to think like he had a fucking brain stem, he nodded and got into the lift with the paramedics and a trolley-bound Nicola without further complaint.

Time both crawled and flew.

While he entrusted Nicola to the NHS, he considered whether or not to take the children out of school. He still had to call Victoria, and he didn’t know what the fuck to tell her. It had happened without warning, without opportunity to think. However, there was no possibility of not telling Victoria, so he proceeded to blindly dial her number. “Hello?” Victoria answered.

“It’s Malcolm.”

“Yes, I do have your number saved, dear boy,” she replied. He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Nicola.”

“What about her?”

“She’s in hospital.”

Victoria hesitated only a second before proceeding to ask, “What happened?”

“She collapsed,” Malcolm said. “She was in a lot of pain, and she drained white, and she collapsed. They’re doing a scan or something right now but the doctor said they’ll probably need to operate.”

“Which hospital?”

“St. Thomas’.”

“I’m on my way, alright?”

“Okay,” Malcolm breathed. He hung up.

He found Bella’s number, and typed up a text message: _Can you please pick up the kids from school and take them to yours?_

It was a mere thirty seconds before he got a reply. _Sure. What will I tell them?_

_Just that Nicola’s in hospital but she’s being taken care of._

_Okay. Keep me updated xx_

Malcolm sighed and dialled the number to Ella’s school. When their receptionist answered, Malcolm hurriedly said, “Hi, it’s Malcolm Tucker here. Ella Murray’s stepsister is coming to take her home, because her mum’s ended up in hospital quite suddenly.”

“What’s her stepsister’s name?”

“Bella Whyte.”

“Alright, Mr. Tucker,” the receptionist replied. “Can you give me a quick description, just so we know the right person is picking Ella up?”

“Uh, yeah,” Malcolm said, slightly thrown. “Bella’s about five foot tall, a bit freckly, with bushy, curly blonde hair and blue eyes, and she’s got a thick Scottish accent.”

“What would you like us to tell Ella?”

“Tell her that her mum is ill, but it’s all under control, and she’s to go home with Bella until it’s all dealt with.”

“Okay. We’ll do that.”

“Thank you.”

It was the same conversation with the primary school. Though Malcolm knew Nicola didn’t want to break the children’s routines, Malcolm couldn’t bear the thought of them being holed up in a classroom while their mother died. He wanted them to be with their family and, right now, Bella was the most senior member of the family available.

A doctor appeared in the relatives’ room – the same doctor who warned him that Nicola would likely need surgery. “Mr. Tucker?” she asked. Her accent was harsh; she sounded like she was from Eastern Europe or Russia.

“Malcolm,” he corrected her. He couldn’t stand to talk about something as personal as his wife’s mortality while being addressed by his last name.

“Malcolm,” she said. “I am Dr. Tymoshenko. Nicola has had an ultrasound; it seems what caused her such extreme pain was a torsion of the ovary, causing internal bleeding. Normally, we would try and repair that surgically.”

“Normally?” he repeated sharply.

Dr. Tymoshenko sat down beside him. “Normally, yes. However, it appears that the chemotherapy your wife has been undergoing has not been as effective as we would like. There are secondary tumours in her womb that are larger than they were the last time they were checked.”

Malcolm’s stomach dropped through the floor. This was the nightmare. “What the fu-” he began, before catching himself. “Sorry.”

“It is okay. I have heard much worse, believe me,” she smiled.

“What can be done?”

“My proposal would be to remove the womb, ovaries and fallopian tubes, and the pelvic lymph nodes.”

Malcolm stared at Dr. Tymoshenko. She was about the same age as Nicola. Her eyes were dark and her hair dirty blonde, tied back into a scruffy knot. “Then you do that.”

“We would like you to say whether or not you would agree with our plan of treatment, since Nicola is still not awake. Do you think this procedure is in your wife’s best interests?”

“I agree you should do whatever it takes to keep my wife alive. She’d rather have this operation than risk leaving three kids without a mother and me without my wife. That’s how she thinks.” That was something he could be completely sure of.

It was nearly an hour before Victoria got to the hospital and found the unit they were on. When she walked into the relatives’ room, Malcolm sat with black coffee in one of those horrendous plastic cups that burnt the lips as he drank. Nicola had gone into surgery literally three minutes before Victoria reached him.

Malcolm was lost. The only thing he knew was that he had once more lost the capacity to feel. It never was good when that happened, and it generally happened when he could not cope with what he knew he was going to feel. So, when he stood up to greet Victoria, he should have known she would find that look about him, and he should not have been surprised by the embrace into which she pulled him. She guided him back into a chair and sat where Dr. Tymoshenko had sat.

Victoria rested a hand on his wrist. “What’s the plan?”

“They’re going to fucking take out her womb, ovaries and fallopian tubes,” he recited what the doctor had told him. “And the pelvic nymph-” he faltered, trying to remember the right words.

“Lymph nodes,” Victoria finished for him.

“Yeah, that.”

Victoria sighed. “I know that’s a daunting thought but-”

“Oh, fucking don’t,” snapped Malcolm. “It is what it is, and we’ll fucking know soon enough when she comes out of theatre.”

She didn’t take offence. It was a mark of how well she had come to know him that she left that idea alone. Rather than speak, she leaned against his arm and held his hand; it was odd, this way she broke through to him. Victoria was in no way intimidated by Malcolm, even when he was at his worst. It was almost like having a second mother.

Victoria and Annie were similar women in that they’d built their careers in the NHS, and did their best for their children, and took on the world without fear or prejudice. The one obvious difference Malcolm had observed was that Annie was hardened by her marriage that was so cruelly cut short, and the strain of trying to raise two grieving adolescents while working on a strained ward in a busy Glasgow hospital. She had walls, and showed her affection with her ferocity.

But Victoria, though no less fierce, was less guarded. She said exactly what she thought without holding anything back, and when it was better to be gentle than fierce, she chose to be gentle.

“What are you doing about the kids?” she eventually asked.

“Bella’s got them.”

“Good,” Victoria replied. “Best place for them.”

It was nearly two hours they sat there in that quiet little room. They said very little, for there was very little to be said. Their silence was interrupted only be text messages from Bella and the occasional bed being wheeled past the room. Malcolm found himself checking that Victoria hadn’t fallen asleep; he’d never known her so quiet. It wasn’t right for Victoria not to speak. She was scared – Malcolm knew that – but her silence was the only thing she could hold as a defence. That Victoria was scared said it all; she wasn’t a woman who seemed to experience fear at all.

It was the one thing that could put fear into Victoria, it seemed – the thought of losing her daughter. The only other time he had seen her strength waver was when Nicola took that panic attack outside the chapel. It had shocked Victoria, even after four decades of dealing with Nicola, which meant it was the most extreme reaction she had taken to anything. That had to indicate it was something Victoria had never encountered in Nicola before that moment.

Malcolm’s mind couldn’t help but revisit that look of incredible terror upon Nicola’s face when he followed Bella and found her. Like Victoria, he had never seen that before. Nicola confronted everything for what it was – even cancer. If anything, she preferred not to acknowledge the worst of her fears. For her to disintegrate like she did on their wedding day, whatever she hid – and was still hiding – had to be the worst possible scenario.

He didn’t know why he did it, after Nicola demanding that he did and said nothing. He said, “Somebody broke into the house.”

Victoria sat up straight and looked around at him. “What?” she replied sharply.

“Last week, when we picked the kids up from yours. We got home and someone had broken in. They left a bunch of flowers and a wedding card on the coffee table.”

“What kind of flowers?”

That wasn’t the question Malcolm had anticipated, but he answered nonetheless. “Lilies,” he said. “White lilies.”

“What flowers would you send to a woman’s funeral, or put at her grave?”

Malcolm didn’t even hear the word come out of his mouth. “Lilies.” He stared at Victoria. How did he not realise that before? “It was a death threat.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you go to the police?”

“Nicola refused to let me,” he said. “There was a picture sent to DoSAC as well. Someone took a picture of us in a café and sent it to Nicola. I tried to phone the police and she went off her fucking head at me. Took my phone. Said that I had to give her a fortnight to sort it out before we told the police.” This news was not going down well with Victoria; she was blatantly horrified. “Bella got a letter from a cousin,” he added. “One of her Traveller cousins on her mother’s side. The man met James in jail last year, and James asked a favour of him a few weeks ago. He – the cousin – sent a letter to Bella to warn her but he sent it to Portree, and she only got it the other day. He agrees with Nicola. He said if we involve the police, James might order a retaliation.”

Victoria groaned. “Don’t tell me that fucking mental case has managed to get Travellers to target Nicola.”

“No,” Malcolm said. “No, if nothing fucking else, in their minds, Nicola’s Bella’s stepmum and they wouldn’t harm her. Actually, if anything, I think they’d help her rather than hurt her.”

She looked a little less unnerved by the idea that the people asked to hurt Nicola would rather protect her, though she was by no means calmed. Malcolm knew he had just told Victoria something she could have happily lived without knowing. “That phone call on your wedding day,” she said. “That had to have been something to do with James. It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be him behind that.”

“I don’t think he’d have been able to call her from inside,” Malcolm pointed out.

“Maybe not from their phones,” Victoria conceded, “but if anyone were to have a mobile phone smuggled into prison, it would be James fucking Murray. Or maybe he got somebody else to call for him. Who knows? I’m just fucking sure it was his doing.”

He found that he and Victoria were staring at one another; Malcolm felt ridiculously stupid for not seeing in a week what Victoria had seen in a moment. The pieces they had put together were not at all comforting. Indeed, it only made Malcolm wonder what it was Nicola knew that brought her to believe she could stop this herself. And with her in surgery now, and the weeks it might take her to recover, there could be no question of her going out and dealing with whatever James had started.

Of course, keeping Nicola at rest while her body recovered would be a job Malcolm was loath to accept as her husband; she was stubborn, and had no concept of when enough was enough. She worked with cancer, while grieving, after an attempt on her life. It wouldn’t surprise him if she did attempt to follow her original plan, whatever that happened to be.

Victoria nudged Malcolm in the ribs to snap him out of his train of thought. He looked at his watch to find Nicola had been away for nearly two and a half hours. He then looked up to see Dr. Tymoshenko, this time in green scrubs rather than her own clothes, wearing a rather puzzled expression Malcolm could not fathom. All he could gather from the doctor was that either it had gone very well, or something had gone badly wrong.


	10. Anaesthesia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to be at my granny's in six hours. I haven't slept yet. Fuck my life.

Dr. Tymoshenko sat down opposite Malcolm and Victoria. “The surgery went as well as we hoped. She will need to continue with the chemotherapy, but this went well,” she said. “She is coming round from the anaesthesia. She is not quite awake yet but she keeps saying a name I do not know yet, and I would like to know who it is, so we can contact them.”

“What name?” asked Victoria, though Malcolm already had a fair and unpleasant idea.

“James.”

“Well,” Malcolm said as he cleared his throat, “you’d have a hard job getting him here. He’s in prison.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Tymoshenko. “What is he in prison for, if you do not mind me asking?”

Malcolm looked the doctor dead in the eyes. “Trying to kill Nicola.”

“So you do not want him here.”

“Definitely not,” Malcolm confirmed.

Dr. Tymoshenko nodded her head, and pushed the stray strands of hair behind her ears. “It is normal for people coming out of general anaesthesia to be a little bit confused,” she said, “but Nicola seems determined to say something. Does the number twenty mean anything to either of you?”

Malcolm glanced at Victoria. “No,” they replied in unison.

“She has also been saying he’s got something? Not anything specific but he keeps saying ‘he’s got’ over and over again.”

Malcolm again looked at Victoria; neither of them had the answers. Nicola was the only one who knew what she was trying to say. “Can I see my wife?”

Dr. Tymoshenko nodded. “She is still a bit out of it. Not completely conscious yet. But yes, you may see her.”

As he followed the doctor, with Victoria at his heels, Malcolm almost gave himself a headache trying to work out how he could keep Nicola safe. Now that he knew the meaning behind those flowers, he was desperate to do something, _anything_ , to keep her from harm. If Patrick MacDonald was right – and he had to trust the judgement of that man – then Malcolm had to work on the assumption that James would react badly to having the police sniffing about him.

But he refused to be backed into a corner. He would not be left at the mercy of James Murray’s whims, only getting an answer when he decided to give it. Yes, he would go and see James if he got the opportunity, but in the interim, he could not sit here and do nothing. Not when he now knew what it all meant.

Malcolm sat down at Nicola’s side. Though she was stirring, mumbling, she was still a bit out of it. Gently, he picked up her hand and pressed his lips to it. He had seen her in a hospital bed more often than he would ever have wanted. “James,” she muttered.

He squeezed her hand. “No, love, it’s Malcolm,” he told her.

Victoria sat down beside Malcolm; he felt her place a hand on his shoulder.

“James…is…he…” she slurred. Malcolm looked over his shoulder at Victoria, whose gazed moved from her daughter to her son-in-law with confusion. “James…twenty…he’s got…” Her eyes couldn’t decide if they wanted to be open or closed, but in the brief moment they met his, he saw that even under the weight of anaesthesia his wife was torn between telling him something and keeping it from him. “The kids…Malcolm, the kids.”

“They’re with Bella,” Victoria said. “They’re okay. Bella and Euan are looking after them, Nicola. It’s okay.”

“He’s going…going to take…”

“Over my dead body,” growled Malcolm. “James will get nowhere near the children. You know I won’t let that happen, nor will your mum or Bella.” Nicola frowned, so Malcolm softly stroked her arm to try and calm her. She was scared, and it was not good for a patient to be scared; even Malcolm knew enough to know that.

Nicola slowly regained her consciousness until she was awake. Sleepy, but awake. She seemed not to recall what she had said about James and the children, or about the number twenty, or about whatever it was she thought James was in possession of. The first time she strung together a full sentence, it was one far more benign than the broken mumblings of before. “Malcolm,” she said hoarsely. “Malcolm, I love you. I love you.”

Despite his anxieties over James, Malcolm smiled. “I love you.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“You collapsed,” Malcolm said. “The doctors had to operate on you.”

“What?” Nicola was now looking at her mother, the retired consultant, for an explanation.

Victoria pulled her chair forward a few inches. “They had to remove your ovaries, darling,” she explained. “And your fallopian tubes and uterus, and the lymph nodes in your pelvis.”

Nicola’s mouth fell open; whatever she was wanting to say, it never made its way out. She didn’t look best pleased, though Malcolm didn’t reckon he’d be thrilled by the news of the removal of his internal organs, either. So, to lighten her mood, he told her, “You made a fucking miraculous achievement today.”

She fixed her eyes on him with a strangely serene smile. “What’s that?”

“You went in a lift.”

Her right eyebrow lifted at this revelation. “And you let that happen?” Malcolm hesitated; he hadn’t anticipated her being offended. After all, it hadn’t done her any harm, and it was probably the only time she would ever manage to travel in a lift. “Your face,” she let out a weak giggle. “You’d think I was about to bloody divorce you!”

Malcolm shook his head and chuckled. “You’re something else,” he informed her. Even after major surgery, and while she had the threat of James looming over her, Nicola managed to wind him up for a laugh. She continued her frail laughter, highly amused by her own jokes. The woman was a torment, but she was his torment. She was still pale and weak, but there was some life in her eyes that she had lacked when he had seen her pace the DoSAC offices.

Her fingers felt so breakable between his. As always was the case when she was ill or injured, Nicola just looked small and fragile to Malcolm, lying under those startlingly white NHS sheets. It was all too easy to forget that this was a woman who had fought mental illness her whole life, who survived an unendurable marriage, who endured grieving the loss of her child, who battled cancer, who accepted a stepdaughter without hesitation or anger, who continued to raise her own children to be whatever they wanted to be, who made a better man of Malcolm Tucker…her unimaginable strength was contained in that tiny, delicate body. He didn’t know how it contained her. It seemed impossible.

* * *

 

He drove to get the children from Bella that evening, when he was sure Nicola was going to be alright. As he drove, he continued to think about James. There was no question of him doing nothing while he waited for the slimmest chance to corner that bastard. That was not going to happen now that he knew the full meaning behind the break-in to the house. While it was a vague threat, he had been able to hold back his need for action, but if Victoria was right, this not something he had it in him to ignore.

If there was no possibility of a police investigation, someone else was going to have to do it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the skills required and he had a sick wife to take care of. But he had a mobile full of phone numbers for people (though he used that word loosely) who did have those skills, and who owed him for bollockings for which he had given reprieves, or for stories for which he had given first refusal.

Parked outside Bella’s house, he called the journalist whose intelligence and discretion he trusted most – though dating Olly Reeder wasn’t a great indicator for the presence of functional brain cells. “Hello, Angela Heaney speaking.”

“Hey, Angela,” Malcolm said as he unclipped his seatbelt. “Now, I know how you love to report on the Cabinet Fuck Up of the Week, but how would you like to do a real bit of fucking journalism?” he asked.

“Malcolm Tucker?” she replied, the surprise evident in her tone. “What are you suggesting?”

“James Murray.”

“Ah, your wife’s ex.”

“I think he’s ordering people on the outside to stalk Nicola,” Malcolm explained. “I know for a fact he asked one of my daughter’s cousins to do it, but he told Murray to fuck off.”

“Malcolm, I don’t know,” she hesitated. “I mean, what is there for me to find?”

“Fucking plenty!” Malcolm said, raising his voice slightly as he leaned over the back of the seats to retrieve the cornflour and milk Bella had asked him to stop for on his way over. “The man worked for Albany, who got the prison PFI contract. I refuse to believe he fucking behaved himself there. And aside from anything else, Angela, the man is fucking mental. There’s no way he’s not crossed lines we don’t know about.”

“What is it I’m looking for?”

“Anything. Anything we can use against him to make the people he’s hiring want to keep their distance. Criminals don’t tend to like the company of other criminals when their face is plastered all over the fucking press.”

“Right, fine. I’ll have a little dig, and if I happen upon anything-”

“You fucking tell me before you print it,” he cut across her. “That is fucking imperative, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Malcolm,” she said. He could almost hear the eyes rolling.

“Thanks.”

He hung up and went to knock on Bella’s door. He heard her shout, “Aye, come in aboot, Dad!”

Malcolm groaned and opened the door. He closed the door and locked it behind him before he shed his coat and went to the kitchen, where he slammed the milk and cornflour down onto the counter in front of Bella as she poured macaroni pasta into a large pot. “Don’t you ever let me fucking catch you doing that again,” he snarled at her.

Bella stared at him, looking rather taken aback by her father’s sudden aggression. “What?” she asked, closing the pasta packet over and picking the kettle up. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“Telling people to come in without looking through the peephole first,” he clarified.

“But I knew it was you, Dad,” she said. “You said you were-”

Malcolm took the kettle from her. “And if it hadn’t been me?” he challenged her. “If it had been one of James’ mates, and you’d left the door unlocked and told them to come in?”

She took the kettle back from him, poured the water into the pot and added salt. “Why would they come here? We don’t even know James knows who I am.”

“And we don’t fucking know that he doesn’t, either!” he retorted. She put the pot onto the hot ring, never taking her eyes off him. “Has growing up with the likes of your grandad taught you fucking nothing, Bella? Do you think Charlie ever operated on the assumption that he could account for every scrap of knowledge the rest of them had?” He had never acknowledged aloud Bella’s grandfather’s chequered dealings because there was never enough proof for him ever to be charged with anything worse than minor driving or altercation charges. That he was never caught was down to Charlie’s ingenuity, and he would have thought some of those lessons would have been passed down to Bella. “From now on, you lock the door. You don’t answer it without checking first. When you leave the house empty, you lock up and put the alarm on. You change the alarm code every week. When you go up to Scotland, you do _not_ leave Aoife here on her own; either take her to Scotland or send her to me. Do you fucking understand?”

It was one of those rare moments of paternal ferocity Malcolm felt for his grown-up daughter. He didn’t want to upset or piss her off – of course that wasn’t what he wanted – but he had to make her understand that she could not assume she was safe. There were no Travellers here to protect her, either, and that was something he rather felt she had come to fall back on. He sometimes thought that coming from an extended family who knew how to handle themselves and defended one another to the hilt made Bella complacent when it came to the idea of her own safety.

Eventually, still with a look of unsettled astonishment upon her face, Bella said, “I understand.”

Malcolm pulled her into a tight hug, hiding the fear he knew had spread into his face from her. And after today, he had never wanted to hold his daughter more than he did now. His hand got lost in her crazy mane of blonde hair; she melted into him, all trace of her guard gone. Today had been tough on her, too; she had watched her stepmother collapse and be carried out by paramedics. Malcolm knew that was very much how Bella saw Nicola at this point – a stepmum. They were closer than he could have expected them to become when Bella first started to find her place in the family. That was why she had taken such an active role in trying to protect Nicola, and why she had been so quick to follow him when Glenn phoned to say Nicola was unwell. He was under no uncertainty as to how much Bella loved Nicola, and how losing the closest thing she had in London to a mum would hurt her.

Bella pulled away to stir the pasta pot as it boiled, probably not really wanting any of it to stick to the bottom. Malcolm left a hand on her back and kissed her head, more thankful than ever that this woman had entered his life, even if it was far too late for his liking. “Where are Ben, Sophie and Ella?” he asked her.

“In the living room, waiting on tea,” she said.

Malcolm gave Bella’s shoulder one last squeeze and went to the younger children in the living room. “Guys,” he said, sitting down next to Aoife on the sofa. “So, your mum – your granny,” he added with a nod towards Eilidh and Alasdair, “fell ill today, as I’m sure Bella told you. Now, she’s had an operation because the parts her cancer got to got very damaged,” he explained it in the only terms he could find to make a child as young as Ben or Eilidh understand. “She came through it okay but she’s still in hospital. She should get home in a few days. I need you to be very gentle with her, alright? I know you’ll want to give her loads of hugs and kisses, but just be careful not to hurt her.”

Ella sat down beside Malcolm and rested her head on his chest. He knew she felt the pressure of this nearly as much as Bella did, being old enough to appreciate human mortality. Her fingers rested on the bracelet he wore on his wrist, that he never took off apart from to wash. It was as much a part of him as his wedding ring.

“Does Mum still have cancer?” Sophie asked.

Malcolm almost hesitated. Almost. “Yes,” he said. “She still isn’t well, but we hope the operation she had today might make her a bit better.” He looked around at Euan and Aoife, and at his children and grandchildren. “There’s something else. I don’t want any panic, but I think we need to take some precautions for the moment. I’ve just said the same thing to Bella. No leaving the door unlocked. No opening the door without me, Bella, Euan, Nicola or Aoife checking who it is. And Aoife, I know sometimes you like to stay here when this lot go away to Scotland,” he said directly to the young Irishwoman, “but for the moment, I need you to either go with them or stay with me when they’re out of London, okay?”

Aoife didn’t argue; he didn’t doubt that Bella had let her in on some of the ‘secret’ incidents of the past week, and she had seen Nicola’s panic attack for herself.

Bella came in and said, “Right, ben the kitchen fur yer denner afore it’s stane cauld.”


	11. Wee Blue Book

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. I've written this in the knowledge I am to be working in Inverness on Friday night, and so will be a zombie on Saturday. And then Christmas and all that stuff. So updates might get slow. Though I may write some stuff up in the car on the way up to Inverness, when I'm still a functioning human. Or, as much a functioning human as I ever am.
> 
> That is all.

The following Monday, Nicola was home and Malcolm had taken two weeks compassionate leave to make sure she didn’t try to be Wonder Woman and end up hurting herself. Bella was popping in and out, while having hushed conversations about any untoward goings on; there didn’t seem to have been anything in the past week, but then Malcolm had left the house only to get groceries and pick up Nicola’s medication. There was no knowing what might have appeared at DoSAC or his own office. He was tempted to get Bella to pick up any mail and deliveries that weren’t marked with a return address, or didn’t look official, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see it.

In the end, however, there was no need for that.

With the post, a yellow envelope fell through the letterbox, addressed to Nicola. Malcolm briefly thought about opening it himself, but realised that opening his wife’s mail was one step too far. Indeed, it was probably something James would have done.

He went to the living room and gently roused Nicola, handing it over while he opened the electric bill. Nicola forced herself into a seated position, wincing slightly as she moved. When he looked up from the bill, Nicola was holding a card in her shaking hands. It was a ‘Get Well Soon’ card. “‘I’ll see you soon,’” she read out.

Malcolm threw the electricity bill – and the rest of the post – onto the coffee table and took the card from her. It was the same as the photograph in that the message was written in block capitals with a black marker. This one had a postmark though – it had gone through Streatham sorting office. Not that it was any indicator of where this person was; who could say they weren’t intelligent enough to post it far away from their own residence?

It was low-level intimidation. The worst that had happened was a photograph and a break-in. Nobody had physically harmed any of the family. It was like the aim was more to unsettle Nicola than it was to hurt her.

Nicola went to rip the card up, but Malcolm swiped it from her. “We’re not destroying it anymore.”

She didn’t argue, but he could see she wanted to. Her way of dealing with this was to ignore it completely, which was why he had taken steps to wreck James before James wrecked Nicola. She was the same with almost everything, and when she couldn’t ignore it, she tried to outrun it. He was fairly sure that contributed to her anxiety, this habit of ignoring a problem then running from it if it couldn’t be ignored.

“I’m going to hoover upstairs, okay?” he said.

She gazed up at him, a soft smile breaking across her face. What the fuck did she have to smile about? “Thank you, Malcolm. You’ve been amazing, looking after the kids, looking after the house, looking after me.”

“Yeah, I’m really gonna make my wife do all the housework after surgery,” he replied, fighting the instinct to roll his eyes at her gratitude. It was the whole fifty-fifty thing again – just as Nicola always did for him, when she wasn’t capable of bringing her full contribution, it was his job to make up for it. But Nicola, in terms of her marriage, never was able to simply accept that. He sighed at her and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She reached up and touched his face; Malcolm pulled her blanket over her chest and said, “Rest.”

Malcolm grabbed the vacuum cleaner and headed upstairs, working methodically through the bathroom, the spare room, his and Nicola’s room, Ben’s room, Sophie’s room and Ella’s room. It was only when he got to Katie’s room that he stopped for a moment before opening the door. Though Nicola had never disturbed anything else in the room – she hadn’t even changed the bedding – the floor still needed hoovered and the surfaces dusted from time to time. One day they would have to deal with this room, but it wasn’t going to be any time soon. It was the evidence that, despite how well she kept going with life, Nicola was still grieving.

He went in and hoovered the floor, until he tripped over the cable and the hoover slammed into the leg of the chair that stood by the window. The purple box that had sat on that chair fell with a crash to the floor, its contents spilling out across the carpet. “Fuck!” he muttered under his breath. He switched the machine off and got onto his knees; Katie’s make up was spread right across the room, bottles of nail polish still rolling under the bed.

Malcolm looked around him and said to himself, “How does a sixteen-year-old own so much fucking make up?!”

While he scrambled under the bed to retrieve the nail polish and a lipgloss tube that rolled under, a pair of feet appeared at the door. “Nicola, go back downstairs,” Malcolm groaned. “I just knocked the box over, that’s all.”

She ignored him. He heard her let out a soft moan as she got down to his level. When he got out from under the bed, she was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the bed, with an eyeshadow palette in her hands. “I got her this for her sixteenth birthday,” whispered Nicola. This was why he hadn’t wanted her to come up – he didn’t want her to be sad. Not on top of everything else.

He stopped gathering Katie’s possessions to check on his wife. Rather than tell her to let it go, he just sat with her, his hand on her arm.

Silent tears fell down Nicola’s face; Malcolm gently stroked her head until she said, “I should be fucking over this,” and wiped her face on her sleeve.

“Don’t be fucking daft,” he replied. “She was your daughter.”

“But she was never yours, and you shouldn’t have to deal with me when I-”

“Nic’la,” he sighed, “you never have to hide it from me.” She was staring at the make up in her hands, like she didn’t actually want to look at him. “Is that why you’ve never done anything but clean in here? In case I see you get upset?” Nicola didn’t answer him, and eventually he let his eyes move around the floor.

There was a small blue vinyl book amongst the mess of make up on the carpet. Malcolm stretched forwards and picked it up. “Her wee blue book,” he smiled, showing its cover to Nicola. “Erin’s got one of these.”

When he looked at Nicola, she was frowning. “Katie didn’t have a savings account,” she said. “We were putting her university money in my name. Katie was wild. We didn’t want her to get it at eighteen, decide she wasn’t going to university and spend it all on something stupid. She didn’t even know we kept money by for her – we were going to tell her when she turned eighteen.”

Malcolm opened the book. It was in Katie’s name, held in trust by James Murray. He flicked through it, to the last deposit, a month before Katie died. At that point in time, there had been over seventy thousand pounds in this account. “What the fuck…” Nicola whispered, yanking it out of his hands. “What the fucking hell is this?”

The deposits were made every week by transfer, but occasionally in cash, with the first one being made over a year before Katie died. The reference column gave the letters ‘TULL’, a pattern broken only by the interest payment, and the deposits were generally between five hundred and fifteen hundred pounds. A thought suddenly crossed Malcolm’s mind. “When did James start working for Albany?” he asked.

“About fifteen months before I took over DoSAC? Right after they got the PFI contract,” Nicola said. He heard the guess in her voice, and knew better than to ask her for a date. “You think he’s behind this, don’t you?”

“He’s the one who opened the fucking account, Nicola!”

Why was she even doubting this was James? Even if they didn’t know his reasons, there was no doubt that this was James. Malcolm was left wondering if there were similar accounts in the names of the other children. If there were – and he almost certain there were – then there had to be three more of these books floating about somewhere.

But Katie had hers. Had she found it? Had she known about whatever was going on here? If James was up to no good, how had she come to be in possession of this book? After all, James surely wouldn’t have wanted Nicola knowing about this, and to keep it from Nicola, he would have had to keep it from the children themselves. So, if Katie had happened upon this book by accident, had she confronted James? Or did he just never know that Katie had it?

But the last payment was a month before her death, after them being weekly, like clockwork, for over a year. He must have known she had it, and she must have refused to give it back to him. Why hadn’t James simply taken it back? He never had a problem with using force to overpower Nicola. Had he been the same with Katie, he would have got this back in no time.

Malcolm tried to stop speculating – he was creating more questions than he was answering.

“Is there any way of making the bank tell me whether he did the same thing with Ben, Sophie and Ella?” Nicola asked. Malcolm refrained from saying that James hadn’t done anything _with_ the children, and that it was more likely he had done it _to_ them. “I didn’t open the account. It’s not in my name.”

Malcolm took the bank book back from Nicola and considered his answer carefully while he searched the book for any trace of Nicola’s name. There was nothing of her here. Only James and Katie. “I fucking…I don’t know,” he answered. “I think it would be up to the bank. But you could try. Show them all the documents. Katie’s death certificate, all the kids’ birth certificates, your marriage certificate, divorce papers, proof James is in prison…” he trailed away. “But I reckon it’d be up to the bank’s discretion.”

Nicola was crawling to her feet with a determine look upon her face that Malcolm really did not fucking like. “Nicola,” he said, catching her as she stumbled. “You’re gonna hurt yourself!” She didn’t give him any reply to his warning. She stepped around the hoover cable and went to their bedroom, and reached up for a shoe box down from the shelf above the television. “No, Nic’la!” Malcolm shouted, pushing her hands down. “You’re not to fucking stretch like that!”

“You fucking get it down then!” she snapped, staggering backwards to sit on the bed. Malcolm got the box down and sat beside her. She rifled through it. “Death certificate,” she said as she thrust the sheet of paper into his hands. “Birth certificates. Marriage certificate. Divorce – his address is the prison on that because he was already convicted when I started the proceedings.” She closed the box, set it down on the bed and stood up. “Help me get dressed, Malcolm,” she said.

Malcolm glowered at her. Had she lost her fucking mind?

Whether she had or hadn’t, however, was irrelevant when she started trying to get her pyjama t-shirt over her head. He got up and helped, though it was against his better judgement. He helped her into a bra and pants, pulled a jumper over her head and jogging bottoms over her legs. Once he got socks and trainers onto her feet, she got up, picked the papers and the bank book up off the bed and headed for the stairs. “Nicola!” Malcolm called after her. He helped her down the stairs until they stood at the front door.

“Malcolm, if you don’t drive me to the bank, I’ll drive my fucking self!”

He closed his eyes for a moment. There was reason behind this determination her, and Malcolm knew what it was. Nicola never was that interested in protecting herself, but protecting her children could come at the cost of her life if that was what it took. If James had used her name, she would not have been half as bothered as she was by the idea of him using the children’s names to run whatever dodgy thing he had been running.

With an imploring look at his wife, and a low groan when she stared resolutely back at him, he picked up the keys. “The bank might just tell us to fuck off,” he warned her.

“Then I’ll get a lawyer to force it out of them,” she growled. “Malcolm, I will not have James fucking Murray using _our_ children,” she pointed at him and then back at herself, “to hide seventy fucking thousand pounds each!” The pitch of her voice was increasing with the volume, making her sound a little shrill with anger.

“Proof of address,” he said.

“What?”

“They might ask for proof of address.” He stalked into the living room, picked up that day’s post – the open electricity bill on top – and handed it to Nicola. “I’ll drive. You find another bill in that lot.”


	12. Alohomora

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inverness tomorrow. Might write on the three hour drive up. Might just fucking sleep. Fuck my life. Also was informed that I, with my stepdad's sister, her husband, my cousin, his wife, his daughter, my uncle, two of his kids, and my brother's girlfriend, am banished to a tiny bedroom to watch Doctor Who on Christmas Day because - wait for it - my mother is scared of Peter Capaldi. Of all the irrational fears to have.

As Malcolm drove, Nicola seemed to be lost in thought. He assumed that, like him, she was trying to work out what the fuck actually had been going on. It wasn’t until she spoke that he realised there was more to it all than he had first believed. “He grounded her,” Nicola murmured. “About two weeks before she died, James grounded Katie. He told me it was because she swore at him and gave him cheek, but she always denied she did. He confiscated her phone, her laptop, made her use his laptop for school work…even banned her from going on the Auschwitz trip with the school. I didn’t think anything of it. Most teenagers give cheek and deny it later, and I was so busy with work…I was actually just glad he was doing some actual parenting. Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see.” She put her hands over her face. “Fucking hell, how pathetic is that?!”

“There’s nothing to say that James was lying about that, though,” Malcolm said. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions about anything, in case they got it wrong and made matters a fucking million times worse, and he definitely didn’t want Nicola to blame herself for anything James might or might not have done.

Nicola sighed and opened one of the letters. “NHS letter will do, won’t it?” she asked.

“Should do.”

“I’m doubting every fucking decision I let him make,” she growled. She kicked the footwell in temper.

“Oi!” Malcolm exclaimed. “Less of the fucking car abuse, if ye don’t fucking mind!”

He looked around at her to find that her original fury at James’ behaviour and determination to get to the truth had been replaced by an anger directed at herself while the anxiety started to bubble to the surface. Her hands shook, the letters and certificates in danger of being scrunched up. He didn’t say anything to her until he parked outside the bank.

Malcolm locked the doors. “I’m not taking you in there until you tell me you know that whatever James might have done was _not your fault_.”

Nicola glared at him. “Malcolm, if he’s done what we think he has, and if he’s done anything to shut Katie up about it, and I didn’t notice, it means I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

He saw it growing in her, this fear that everything she was about to find out about James might be devastating, and that it might be her fault. “No, it means he did his utmost to fucking hide it,” Malcolm replied patiently. He took the bank book out of her trembling hand and waved it at her. “You think you could ever have known about this? Of course you weren’t going to know! If I hadn’t tripped over the hoover cable, you still wouldn’t fucking know about it!”

“I should have fucking known!” she shouted. “I should have seen there was _something_ going on!”

“You couldn’t fucking know!” Malcolm yelled back at her. Why couldn’t she see that there was no way James would have ever let her find out about this? “This is not your fucking doing, Nic’la! Fucking hell – you _know_ James isn’t just violent and cruel! He’s also a fucking devious bastard! Anything he may have said to Katie was bound to be so she didn’t fucking tell you the truth! If he didn’t want you to know then I’m sorry, pet, but there was no way you were getting to know!”

Nicola said nothing more about it. Her next words were, “Just let me out the fucking car and let’s get this over with.”

To argue this point with her would be, for the moment, a losing battle. She had it in her head that she should have seen something, and nothing Malcolm could tell her was going to change that. Not yet, anyway. He knew his wife – Nicola had to see that for herself, and it was going to take time. It never stopped him trying to convince her; he wouldn’t have been a good husband if he didn’t make the effort to tell her that what happened here was not her fault, nor was it her fault that she didn’t know about it. But the defeated look upon her face told him to stop.

He unlocked the door and got out to help Nicola stand up. By the time they got into the bank, he could feel her pulse racing hard in the hand he held. An assistant greeted them as they walked across the room. “Hello. What can we help you with today?” he asked them, smiling what Malcolm suspected was his best ‘customer service smile’. According to his badge, his name was Jake.

“I…” Nicola tried to say, but, as so often was the case with Nicola, she couldn’t get the words out when she tried to form them.

Malcolm took half a step forward. “It’s a bit delicate,” he said, “but we’re hoping you can explain to us what my wife’s ex-husband has done. We found this,” he showed the man the bank book, “in her daughter’s bedroom, but Nicola says Katie’s never had a savings account, and even if she did, it wouldn’t look like this.”

Jake took the bank book, and frowned when he opened it. “The account was opened by James Murray,” he said. “I take it he’s the ex?”

“Yeah.”

“I see. Well, this is a little irregular, so I’ll get the branch manager to come and discuss it with you. If you just take a seat over here,” he said, gesturing to a vacant desk, “I’ll go and get her.”

Malcolm took Nicola over to sit down. “You okay?”

She nodded her head but didn’t speak. Her face was rather pale.

The manager approached, holding her hand out for them to shake as she sat down across the desk from them. “I’m Belinda, the branch manager,” she said. “Jake tells me you would like to know about this bank account,” she added, laying the bank book down on the desk. “Can you tell me what you do know about it?”

Malcolm gave Nicola a look to tell her to speak; this was something she had to do because, though they were his kids in his mind, they weren’t on paper. “Well,” she said, “we found that in my daughter’s room today, but she never had a savings account. We didn’t want to do it that way because she never could be trusted to get access at eighteen and not squander it. My ex-husband knew that, so I don’t know why he’s done this, but I would like to know anything you can tell me about it, and if he’s done this with my other three children.”

Belinda signed into the computer and returned her attention to Nicola. “Alright. Well, before I can do that, I need to know you are who you say you are.”

“I have all this stuff,” Nicola said as she pulled her driving licence out of her purse. “My ID, my kids’ birth certificates, everything.” She thrust the pile of papers at Belinda. “Please, I just want to know what the hell is going on.”

Belinda smiled reassuringly. “Okay. We’ll see what we can dig up on Katie’s account,” she said, typing away on the computer. Within moments, Malcolm was watching her read through the information in front of her. “The account was opened by James Murray, on behalf of Katie Murray, two and a half years ago. The opening deposit was seven hundred pounds. The current balance is one hundred and forty-three thousand pounds. The last deposit, one thousand and twenty-eight pounds, was made in cash last Thursday by James Murray, but it seems like the vast majority are made by transfer from another account,” she explained. “It’s under the name of the ‘Tullibardine Group’. As far as I can see, nobody has ever withdrawn any sum of money since the account was opened.”

Malcolm and Nicola stared at one another, and he was sure they were thinking the same thing. Neither of them, however, wanted to verbalise it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Belinda.

Nicola tore her eyes off Malcolm’s to look at the bank manager. “My daughter is dead and my ex-husband is in prison. How on Earth is this account still active?”

Belinda’s mouth fell open as the magnitude of the problem hit her. “Shall we check and see if your other children have accounts?”

And with every child’s name she drew up, she found the same thing. The creation of each account had been staggered by a month – Katie’s first, Ella’s a month later, then Sophie, then Ben – but money still went into each account every week, on different days, and had done since they were opened. The total of the money involved was half a million pounds over the course of two and a half years. Malcolm couldn’t help himself. “Fuck me sideways,” he said, pulling his hand over his face. Nicola glared at him for swearing, but what else could be said about this?

Belinda seemed to share Malcolm’s shock. “We can contact the police for you, if you’d like.”

“No,” Nicola instantly replied. “No, we’ll do that ourselves. But thank you.”

* * *

 

An hour before the children were due home from school, Malcolm sat with Nicola in silence. They’d had an almighty row over what to do with this information; it seemed even this wasn’t reason enough for Nicola to call the police. Malcolm wanted to know who the fuck was still putting money in those accounts, even after Katie died. But Nicola wasn’t having it, and he couldn’t risk her health by provoking her into the same reaction she had taken the last time he had tried to get the police involved.

If for nothing more than to crack their stony and angry silence, Malcolm said, “Have you looked at Katie’s phone and laptop since she died?”

Nicola sighed. “No. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was no reason to, anyway.”

Malcolm touched her thigh, his frustration with her unwillingness to act on the information available dissipating. “Would you mind if I have a look?” he asked her gently. “It’s just, Katie might have spoken to one of her friends about it.”

Nicola bit her lip. Malcolm knew she was scared of opening old wounds she was in the process of trying to heal. But she was braver than that. If there was anything he knew about Nicola it was that, even though she was unwilling to endanger her family by going to the police about James, she was quite possibly the bravest woman he had ever known. “Alright,” she mumbled. “Okay. James put them on top of the wardrobe when he confiscated them.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek. There was a drive in him now that had faded in his depression; it made him desperately want to know everything there was to know about all of this, no matter what it was and how unpleasant it might turn out to be.

In the privacy of his bedroom, he dialled Angela Heaney’s number. “Hello?” she asked.

“Hey, it’s Malcolm,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“There’s a couple of sketchy things,” Angela said, “but not enough to outright say he was doing anything illegal. He definitely wasn’t following Albany company policy with certain things he was putting into invoices and expenses, but I’ve not found anything that breaks the law yet.”

“Well, I’ve made a discovery of my own,” he said. “Tullibardine Group. See what you can find out about them. It looks like James was taking money from their accounts and putting it into children’s savings accounts.”

“Money laundering?” Angela asked curiously.

“Well, we don’t fucking know yet, do we?” Malcolm retorted impatiently. “That’s why I’m telling you to look into this fucking Tullibardine Group.”

Angela sighed. “Okay, okay. I’ll see what I can find.”

He hung up without another word.

Once he retrieved the electronics from where James had hidden them over a year ago, he went back downstairs and plugged them in, knowing they would need charged after a year idle. The laptop showed signs of life first. Nicola diverted her attention to the television, clearly wanting to do anything but look through Katie’s last online movements. The first hurdle came far too quickly for Malcolm’s liking. “Fuck,” he muttered. “D’you have any idea what her password might be?”

“All her passwords were ‘alohomora’,” Nicola answered tonelessly. She didn’t take her eyes off the TV. “I didn’t give my teenage daughter a computer and let her not tell me her passwords.”

Malcolm noted with a wry smile that, like Ella, Katie must have been a Harry Potter fan. “Did she have Facebook? Twitter? An email address?”

With an irritated groan, Nicola reached over for the notepad on the sideboard and scribbled down an email address. “She had Facebook. That should get you into everything.”

She still refused to look at him, and handed him the notebook as she returned her attention to the television. “Nic’la…” Malcolm began. “If you don’t want me to do this, I won’t do it.”

“Nope. It’s fine. Go ahead.” Her voice was flat, and yet full of suppressed grief Malcolm knew she carried with her every day, no matter her outward demeanour.

Part of him wanted to stop, because it was so clearly upsetting his wife. But he needed to know. He signed onto the laptop and opened the internet browser, choosing to check her Facebook first. There was a load of notifications from friends who had posted on her page when she died, on her birthday, at Christmas, on the anniversary of her death.

The last private conversation had been with Molly Fairchild, and seemed to be about the trip to Auschwitz Nicola had mentioned, with Molly asking Katie how cold Poland was in the autumn, and if she should pack jeans or leggings. Malcolm could only assume James had taken the laptop not long after that was sent.

He went to the Google Mail sign in page and logged onto there. There was a lot of emails about Facebook notifications clogging things up, so he scrolled back to the last opened email. This, again, was from Molly Fairchild. He went back to the top of the thread and read from the start.

Molly had sent, seemingly with no prompt: _I don’t care what your dad says. If you don’t tell your mum about that bank book I’ll tell her myself. Or I’ll go to the police. He’s up to something illegal and you shouldn’t be protecting him xx_

When Malcolm saw Katie’s reply, he realised the girl had hated her father. _Don’t. Please don’t. I’m not protecting him. I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire with a firework stuffed up his arse. Just trust me, Molly. We can’t tell anyone. Just let him get on with it and someone else will catch him. It can’t be us xx_

_But he’s breaking the law, isn’t he? He must be breaking the law to be doing that. Are you scared of him? xx_

After that, there was nothing. Malcolm went back to the inbox and scanned the screen, but he couldn’t see anything else of interest. There was one unsent message, though, saved in the drafts. When he opened it and read it, his stomach turned in horror.

_Molly, please don’t do anything about the bank book. My dad just worked out I’ve got it and he’s really mad. I’m not going to give him it but don’t go to the police and don’t tell my mum. He knows you know about it and he’s saying he’ll go round and shut you up if he has to. I promised him you wouldn’t say anything. That’s the only reason he’s not breaking your door down right now. He’s mental, Molly. He batters my mum. She thinks I don’t know but I’ve seen him do it. And then last week he was drunk and he wanted to shag my mum. She kept saying no but he’s bigger than her. She just kept asking him to stop and he kept going. She told him he was hurting her and he didn’t stop. I heard him. I heard her tell him to stop at least half a dozen times. The next morning there was a bruise on her collar bone and around her wrists and arms. He must’ve really hurt her. He’s dangerous and I wouldn’t put it past him to hurt you to keep himself out of trouble. I’m scared of what he might do to me, you or my mum. Especially my mum. I can’t even think about what he might do if you tell her and she tries to do anything about it. Just don’t say anything to anybo_

The message was never finished, and it was never sent.

There was no stopping it. He dived to his feet and ran to the kitchen, throwing up into the sink. Seconds later, Malcolm heard Nicola’s footsteps approach, and then her hand rubbing gently on his back. “What’s wrong?” she asked. She picked up a glass from the draining rack and filled it with water. “Malcolm?”

He turned to search her face for the reason she had told him about using sex as a means of controlling James’ temper, but not that what Katie had intended to tell Molly had ever happened. Why hadn’t she told him? Did she think he would think any less of her for something James had done? Hadn’t she learned by now that Malcolm could never blame her for James and his disgusting behaviour?

With every discovery he made about James, Malcolm could only find more hatred for the man. Was there something wired wrong in James’ head that told him the way he had lived was acceptable? Should he have been put in Broadmoor rather than Belmarsh?

Malcolm took her by the hand and guided her back to the sofa, sat down beside her and turned the laptop towards her so she could see the screen. He watched as she read and the colour drained from her face. “I didn’t…” Nicola said, but her voice shook. She took a breath and tried again. “I didn’t know she knew.”

Once again, she was refusing to look him in the eyes; she stared into the television like it might take her to another dimension where she didn’t have to deal with this. “Why didn’t you tell me he did that, Nicola?” he asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I _do_ want to fucking talk about it.”

Nicola turned the volume of the television up, leaving Malcolm in no doubt that this was not up for discussion. With a sense of foreboding, he went to see if the mobile phone had charged enough to be switched on.


	13. Staring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. Guess who has been awake for 43 solid hours? Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
> 
> Inverness turned out to be hell on Earth last night. I witnessed levels of stupidity I didn't even know existed. Also, why do people always insist on trying to get cocaine and pills into parties, pubs and clubs with security? Literally the only positive thing was the journey up, which took longer because we decided to go over to Dunkeld and up the A9 from there, rather than over the Lecht and up the A9 from between Carrbridge and the Slochd, because the Lecht is a bastard of a road. The vague plans I had when I started this series are now intricate ones, with some unexpectedly inspired input from my brother. It made that journey almost tolerable.

Malcolm sat down with Katie’s mobile phone; he almost wished he’d never opened this can of worms. Nicola’s determined yet blank stare at the television told him she hated this, that she wanted him to stop, that the uncovering of what Katie had known about her marriage was bordering on being _too_ painful for her.

But it wasn’t in his nature to do half a job.

He knew nothing new would come through – pay as you go SIM cards deactivated after six months idle, and were abandoned completely after nine months – but everything that had been on the phone the last time it was used would still be there. The first thing he did was go to Katie’s text messages. The last one received was from Molly, asking if she had done the history homework, and if she could call and help Molly with it. Before that, there was nothing of real importance, except the brief but recurring conversations about Nicola. It seemed in the months leading up to her death, Katie had been very fucking concerned about her mother’s safety.

Malcolm opened the text thread Katie had shared with Nicola. In the week before the phone was taken from her, Katie had asked her mum every day if she was okay, if she wanted to talk about anything, and that she loved her. How had Nicola never figured out what Katie knew? It was blatantly fucking obvious. But Nicola didn’t want to believe Katie could ever have known the depths to which her parents’ marriage was fucked up, and Nicola had a habit of refusing to believe what she didn’t want to believe – she was the woman who tried to say she had a choice in what cancer might do to her, or that she could control the unknown entity stalking her.

There was a conversation with James, too, in which Katie had asked him to pay the last instalment for the Auschwitz trip. He had said he would send it to school with her the next morning.

The one thing that did occur to Malcolm was that while the laptop was protected by a password he presumably didn’t know, the phone was open for him to delete whatever he felt like. There was no way to tell what James might have deleted.

He tried to call the voicemail number but there was no service to a discontinued SIM card.

The photographs were innocuous, and the videos were mostly of her larking about at school, one of what Malcolm could only assume, judging by how terrible she was at it, was one of the first times Nicola had played a video game with Ben, and a few of Ella and Sophie singing songs from High School Musical. It seemed to be the average sixteen-year-old’s iPhone.

“Why was her phone pay as you go and not on a contract?” asked Malcolm.

Nicola didn’t look at him, but she did give him an answer. “We thought if she had a limited amount of credit and had to use her own money or convince us to top it up, she wouldn’t spend absolutely all her time calling her friends and sending text messages. The hope was she might learn to be responsible for at least her phone.”

The next place Malcolm went was voice recordings. There were two. He opened the most recent, which was timestamped two days before Malcolm believed the phone had been taken, first, to hear James speaking.

“I know you’ve fucking got it, Katie.”

“Paranoia will destroy ya, Dad,” Katie replied coolly. This was the first time he had heard Katie’s voice. There was something of Nicola in its pitch.

“Give me it or so fucking help me, I’ll-”

“You’ll what? Knock me about a bit like you do to Mum? Rape me?” There was a pause. “Oh, yeah, I know about that. But Mum didn’t tell me, so don’t bother taking it out on her.”

There was a clattering; Malcolm couldn’t say whether James was tearing the room apart trying to find the bank book or if it was purely in temper.

“Do you know, Dad, you’re right. I have got your precious little book. Here’s the deal: you never, ever, do again to Mum what you did to her the other night and I won’t take it to the police.” If Katie had lived, Malcolm thought he might have got on well with her; she had nerve, and the cool head to pull it off. “Do we have a deal?”

There was another silence, and Malcolm could only imagine Katie and James glaring at one another. “Fine,” James finally said. “Fine. Get on with your fucking homework.”

The recording cut. Malcolm dared look at his wife, expecting to see tears. She was still staring ahead into the television screen. He reached out to her, touching her arm gently; she pulled it away and shrunk back into the corner of the sofa.

Temporarily giving up on getting anything sensible – or anything at all – out of Nicola, he opened the second and last voice recording.

“James, get off!”

It was Nicola’s voice.

“No. No! Fucking stop it!” There was no playfulness in her voice, nor any laughter; the predominant component seemed to be fear. “Please, James, you’re hurting me! No!”

A noise came that sounded disturbingly like the ripping of cloth.

“James! James, you’re drunk. Get off me, calm down and _think about what you’re doing_.” It was Nicola’s attempt at being stern, but it did no good. There was a low moan from James, then footsteps approaching.

“Go back to bed, Sophie,” Katie whispered. “It’s okay. Go back to bed, baby.”

The footsteps retreated, and a door quietly closed.

“…please stop! You’re really hurting me!”

The recording stopped.

Malcolm looked at Nicola. Her face remained stony and passive, like she was actively trying not to get emotional. When she finally spoke, all she said was, “Put that stuff away before the children come home and see it out. They’ll start asking questions.”

The only thing Malcolm could do for her right now was obey her. Let her have control. It was the one thing he could give her, since she wasn’t allowing a conversation or even tactile comfort. He switched the phone off, shut down the laptop, wrapped the charging cables up and headed up the stairs with the whole lot. Once in the bedroom, he put Katie’s belongings back on top of the wardrobe and sat down on the bed with his face in his hands.

This was bad. This was really fucking bad. How could he trust anything Nicola said when she held so much back from him? Over and over again, she avoided lying by saying nothing. She hadn’t told him about her cancer without it being dragged out of her. She hadn’t told him about James abusing her. She hadn’t told him about James raping her. She hadn’t told him that at the time of her death, Katie was living under a grounding Nicola had broken the day she was killed. It put the blame James placed at Nicola’s door in a whole new light – what if he had been so angry because he knew that car would crash that day? He had confined Katie to barracks to limit the time she could spend with Molly – of that, Malcolm was sure – but had he kept it up knowing Molly would take her best friend out driving at the first opportunity?

He needed to speak to Molly Fairchild. Her name was cropping up too often for Malcolm to believe she wasn’t sitting on information he didn’t already have. He needed to know what, if any, direct interaction that girl had with James Murray. He resolved to get her address, whether it came from Nicola or if he had to find it through other means.

He heard the door open as Sophie and Ben got in from school. Ella would surely be less than quarter of an hour; though her school worked on later, it was closer to home.

When he got downstairs, he was far from impressed to find Nicola in the kitchen drinking whisky. “Nicola, you’re on painkillers. Fucking hell, woman, are you-”

“You’re either going to say ‘mad’ or ‘stupid’, both of which I am,” she snapped, knocking the whisky back and pouring another. Malcolm sighed. He knew why she was doing this. He just wished she would lean on him rather than a bottle. He approached her slowly and quietly, and put his hand on her wrist to try and take the glass from her hand. She wrenched it away from him.

At the kitchen door, Ben and Sophie stood with confused expressions. “Go and get changed, guys,” he told them, careful to keep his tone calm and kind. This could not change the way he treated the kids. “And do your homework, okay?”

They nodded and ran upstairs with their schoolbags. Malcolm turned back to Nicola; he pushed her hair behind her ears and out of her face until she drew away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered.

That was not like Nicola. Malcolm was used to her being almost clingy. She enjoyed gentle physical affection, and loved nothing more than to play with his fingers or simply stand with his arms around her. She was a physical person. This was so far from normal that Malcolm wasn’t totally sure he knew what to do with it. He didn’t know why his wife wasn’t letting him touch her. He could guess for the next thousand years and still would not be sure he had got it right.

His frustration came from the instinct to put his arms around her and hold her close, and keep her safe. Above all, he wanted to keep her safe.

“Please don’t drink tonight,” he said.

Her answer was to drain her glass and refill it. He took the bottle away. Nicola opened the glass-fronted cupboard, and took out a bottle of red wine and a large glass. She sat down on a bar stool and opened the bottle. Short of removing all the alcohol from the house and causing an extremely fucking loud argument, Malcolm didn’t really know what he could do to stop her when she was this determined to drink to get drunk. All he could do was try and look after her as best he could, and try not to let the children see their mother press the self-destruct button. He could only try to be a good husband and a good dad.

Nicola started drinking. Malcolm started making chicken pasta bake.

When Ella got home, she was given the same instructions as her siblings: go upstairs, get changed, do her homework. He met her at the front door so she didn’t have to see Nicola deteriorate.

Once the homework was done and the pasta baked, he set them up around the coffee table in the living room with a movie and their dinner; he sat with Nicola in the kitchen. Though she was already half-cut, he managed to get her to eat at least some of her meal, albeit washed down with more wine.

He floated between his wife and his children, trying to be in two rooms at once while recognising it was not possible. Malcolm was worried Nicola would lose her already precarious balance and fall, and if she fell, she might do damage to her surgical wounds. On the other side of the coin was the knowledge he couldn’t neglect the kids because of Nicola’s behaviour. It was not their fault, after all.

At eight o’clock, Malcolm relented and told the children they were to go to bed, but could keep their lights and televisions on until nine. And once he was sure they were settled, and once he had locked the door and set the alarm, he was faced with the task of getting Nicola safely into bed.

“C’mon,” he said. “It’s time you were in bed, love.”

Nicola’s eyes were fixed onto the bottom of her glass. She didn’t move, and Malcolm knew that she wouldn’t. At this stage, after at least three drams and a bottle and a half of wine on top of painkillers, he rather thought she _couldn’t_ get up and walk.

So, Malcolm scooped Nicola up into his arms and carried her up the stairs to their bed. It was the first time she had looked at him all night. Her eyes made it cruelly clear how much pain she was in. He set her down on the bed and started to get changed; he listened to her silence as he brushed his teeth and washed his face, hoping that drink might have loosened her tongue and she could tell him what was going on in her head – if she knew what that was herself, of course.

He returned to her and tried to help her out of her clothes, but again she flinched back from his touch. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised her. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Then let me help.”

This behaviour in Nicola now created a bottomless well of patience, but if this had been two years ago, he would have told her to buck up or fuck off. But since his wife had taught him to be human, he found an empathy in himself that still quite frightened him when it reared its head.

Nicola crawled under the bedcovers fully clothed. Malcolm turned on the bedside lamp and switched the light off, and got into bed beside her. He didn’t dare touch her, despite that being the one thing on the planet he most wanted to do. If she didn’t want to be touched, he had to respect that. But he needed her to understand how much he loved her, and that he was still her husband, despite her erratic behaviour and inability to tell the whole truth. Why was that? Why did she always find a way to inconveniently blurt out the truth on matters of politics, but played her cards so close to her chest when it came to her family and her own life?

“Nicola,” he finally said. She didn’t speak, or acknowledge the fact that he had spoken. She simply kept staring. “I don’t know what’s going through your head. I don’t know how you feel. I can only try to imagine it. But I can’t know or understand it unless you tell me. I want more than anything to give you a hug and keep you close, but if you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t. I love you. I need you to know that. No matter what it is you’re blaming yourself for, or if you’re ashamed of something, or whatever the fuck has got you into this state, I love you.”

There was no response. Her eyes’ fixation on the ceiling did not waver.

Malcolm turned the lamp off and lay down beside her.


	14. Touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!
> 
> My day will be spent with far too many people for my liking. Thankfully, there's only about five out of seventeen who really piss me off. No blood shall be spilt. Hopefully.

“What’s Molly Fairchild’s address?”

Nicola ignored him for a moment, just long enough for Malcolm to resign himself to her refusal to cooperate. So when she spoke, he was surprised. “Twenty-seven Milton Road,” she said.

“Right. Well, I’m gonna go round there with Bella when she gets out of work. Euan will stay here with you and the kids.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Nicola replied, her voice without tone yet again.

“I’m not saying you do,” he sighed, “but there’s somebody out there who might hurt you, and you’re incapacitated. I’d rather there was an able-bodied adult here with you if I’m going out for any length of time.”

Nicola was hungover, in pain and dissociative. In other words, she was being a walking, talking nightmare, and that was why he held back the opinion that, after her behaviour last night, she did fucking well need a babysitter. Her current means of dissociation was to busy herself with cleaning Malcolm wished she wouldn’t do; he hated watching her struggle physically on top of the emotional turmoil she had to be going through.

Malcolm placed himself between Nicola and the window, just as she started to spray green window cleaner; he always hated that vinegary smell of domestic window cleaner. “Stop this, Nicola,” he implored her. “You’re just slowing your recovery down by overexerting yourself.” She did not stop. She stepped around him and set about cleaning the glass. He had to force himself not to grab her and sit her down for her own good. Under any other circumstances, he might have done, but he did not want to frighten her.

He did touch her back, but she jerked herself away. Malcolm tried not to let it hurt him. Rationally, he knew this was simply a symptom of her mental state. He knew she loved him. But she was his wife, and she was supposed to trust him, and it stung that she disallowed even his touch.

There was little he could do to help her.

For two hours, Malcolm lay in bed, trying to distract himself from it all with television. However, he was not as easily distracted as Nicola was, and it didn’t have the same effect on him.

This situation was already taking its toll on his own mental state; while his investigations yesterday had somewhat relieved his inner chaos, today he was faced with the damage he had done to the person he loved most. It was the first day since taking leave that he actually wished he was at work. Though Westminster and Whitehall were toxic waste pools of incompetence and arrogance, it was nowhere as complicated as his wife.

He wanted to shake Nicola. She was behaving like she was empty, but how could she be?

Malcolm’s phone rang. Bella.

“Hey, Bella,” he said.

“Dad, we’ve got a visiting order,” she said. He heard the anticipation border on excitement as she spoke. “I’ll just have to phone and pick a date and time.”

Malcolm said nothing. Right now, he had no way of knowing what he might say or do when he came face to face with James Murray. He couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t end up on the wrong side of the law himself.

“Dad?”

“Yeah,” he said, coming back down to planet Earth. “Yeah, I’m here, Bella. Listen, I need you and Euan to come over after work, okay? I need to go and speak to Molly Fairchild, and I need someone to come with me. I was gonna ask Angela Heaney but she’s busy trying to get to the bottom of this whole fucking Tullibardine thing.”

“Tullibardine?”

“The name of the company James was – and somehow still fucking is – running money through.” Bella, for reasons known only to her, burst out laughing. “What?” he asked her.

“He’s more of a narcissist than I thought,” she said. “The title held by the heir apparent of the Duke of Atholl,” she explained, “is the Marquess of Tullibardine. And the family who holds these titles…”

“Murray,” Malcolm said, sitting up as he cottoned on. “Surely James wouldn’t fucking know _that_?”

“Anybody who’s been to Blair Castle or bothered to Google it knows that,” said Bella. “I was a guide at the castle when I was a teenager. I know the history fucking backwards. And I’ll tell you something else – between 1715 and 1746, the Marquess of Tullibardine was called _James_ Murray. If he knows enough to use Tullibardine as a name for some dodgy company, you can bet your hairy right bollock those numbers will crop up somewhere.”

“Fucking hell!” he exclaimed. “Thanks, Bella!”

“No problem. I’ll be over about half six.”

“Okay. See you then.” He hung up and ran down the stairs. “Nicola!” he shouted. When he found her, she was sitting at the dining table with a notebook and pen. She hastily closed the cover of the notebook over as he entered the room. “Did you and James ever go to Blair Castle?”

She frowned at the opposite wall. “What?”

“Did James ever go to Blair Castle?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, setting the pen down on the table and placing an arm protectively over the notebook. “Yeah. Over ten years ago. I was pregnant with Sophie. His last name is Murray, and he wanted to go to the Murray clan seat. We took a holiday up in Scotland. Started in Edinburgh, up to Perthshire, up to through Highlands, over to Skye, back down to Glasgow for a flight to London.”

“You’ve been to Skye?”

“Only for two nights.”

He sat down in the chair next to hers, and gently pulled the notepad from under her arm. She resisted, but he was stronger than her. He opened it to find her handwriting at its rounded and pretty best. She looked away from him.

_Dear Malcolm,_

_Malcolm, my love. I know this is the one thing you didn’t want me to do. I’ve only done it because I know my children are safe with you, and that you will be their rock once I’m gone. They’re yours now. Please take care of them. Cherish them. Love them. Remind them every day that Mummy loved them. Let this be an end to everything they’ve gone through. This must be the last trauma they endure._

_Tell my mum I’m sorry, and I love her. She’s put up with so much, and I can’t take any of it back. Thank her for her love and her patience. Tell her she’s got a son-in-law to look after. And tell Bella I love her, and she’s got a dad she needs to take good care of, or I will haunt her until the day she joins me. It’ll work. She believes in all that – ghosts and spirits. Too many camps near graveyards, I reckon._

_And Malcolm – you’ll be alright. You were alright before me and you’ll be alright after me. I’m sorry for making you bury yet another person. But you’re tough, and you’ll be okay. I’m not, and I won’t be. So much has happened that I can’t face. I thought when Katie died none of it mattered. What’s worse than losing my child?_

_But it turns out the biggest trauma doesn’t negate all the others, and ignorance doesn’t work anymore. And knowing it was my fault she died, that I’d lifted her punishment to get some peace and quiet, and undermined her father’s authority, what right do I have to live without pain?_

_Just know I love you. God, I love you. I didn’t know it was possible to love a man this much. Loving you is one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve ever known. I just can’t be fixed, and I can’t allow you to destroy yourself trying. Please don’t_

Malcolm could only assume that was the point at which he had walked into the dining room. “Please don’t what?” he asked her. She didn’t face him. “Go on. Finish your letter.”

Two words tumbled out of her mouth to finish a sentence that broke his heart. “Hate me.”

He realised now this was why she wasn’t letting him touch her. She was hiding from him. She didn’t want him to know this was how she felt, or that was standing on the brink. “I would hate that you weren’t here,” he admitted quietly, “but I wouldn’t hate you.”

And suddenly, it was Malcolm fighting back tears. He wanted to hold her (or perhaps he wanted to be held) but he couldn’t have that.

“Nicola,” he said, clearing his throat, “Nicola, look at me.”

She turned her head so she was looking in front of her rather than at the wall adjoining the living room. It wasn’t what he asked of her, but it was a compromise.

“Please, let me in, Nicola. Please. I just want to help. You can tell me anything. Everything, if you want to,” he said to her. “But please, Nic’la, anything’s got to be fucking better than this, my darlin’.” He reached out and put his hand over hers. She pulled it away. He almost wished she would hit him, or show some display of anger and grief; that had to be healthier than this. This isolation she was inflicting upon herself was only making it harder on her. It stripped him of what he needed to best comfort her. “Don’t make me put you in the car and take you to A and E,” he warned her. There was no response. “Don’t make me call your mother.”

What would it take to make her look at him?

It was time to stop making threats. He took out his phone and dialled Victoria’s number. She picked up before the first dial tone ended. “Hello, Malcolm,” she said.

“Victoria,” he said. Nicola still didn’t react, so he decided to make good on his threat. “Nicola’s not well. I can’t fucking do anything with her. She won’t let me touch her. She won’t speak to me. She won’t even fucking look at me.”

“Has she said what’s wrong?” Victoria asked. He heard her putting something heavy onto a hard surface.

“She’s written a suicide note.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“Please,” he said. “I’m fucking out of my depth here.”

“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

While he had his phone in his hands, he typed up a text message to Angela Heaney: _Malcolm Tucker here. It might be worth looking for the numbers 1715 and 1746 in the Albany records._

Nicola didn’t move, speak or look at him in the fifteen minutes it took for Victoria to reach the house. When she knocked on the door, Malcolm went to let her in, helped her out of her coat, and told her where her daughter was. “She’s practically fucking catatonic,” he said. “I can’t get anything out of her, never mind any fucking sense.”

Victoria sighed. Malcolm led her to the dining room. “Nicola, darling,” she said gently. “What are you doing?” Malcolm pushed the notebook towards Victoria, so she could read what Nicola had written. “Nicola, what is this?” she asked as she read. “What do you mean, ‘So much has happened that I can’t face’, sweetheart?”

Nicola would not even look at her mother.

“‘…the biggest trauma doesn’t negate all the others,’” Victoria read aloud. “What happened, Nicola?”

Nothing. Not even a flinch. If he didn’t see her chest rising and falling, and the occasional blink, Malcolm would have said his wife was dead in that chair. Victoria rubbed her daughter’s back, but Nicola did the same with her mother as she did with her husband – pulled away from her touch.

Malcolm’s tolerance for Nicola’s self-destruction had evaporated. It could not continue, for it might well achieve its end. He went upstairs and took Katie’s phone down from the wardrobe and switched it on. When he returned to Nicola and Victoria, he wasn’t surprised to walk into a silent room. He gave Nicola fair warning; he invaded her line of sight with Katie’s phone in his hand, and said to her, “I’m sorry, Nicola, but you’re not leaving me with any other option.”

Victoria watched him curiously, and Malcolm hit ‘play’ on the older of the two voice recordings.

“James, get off!”

Malcolm closed his eyes and tried not to hear the fear and pain in Nicola’s voice.

“No. No! Fucking stop it! Please, James, you’re hurting me! No!”

The tearing of Nicola’s clothes came through the phone’s speakers.

“James! James, you’re drunk. Get off me, calm down and  _think about what you’re doing_.”

“Go back to bed, Sophie. It’s okay. Go back to bed, baby.” Katie’s whisper and the retreating footsteps.

 “…please stop! You’re really hurting me!”

The recording ended.

Victoria looked horrified. “What the fuck did he do to you, girl?” she demanded furiously.

Nicola’s stoicism was shattered. Tears poured down her face. She fell apart in front of him. Victoria tried to comfort her, to take her hand, but Nicola stood up and backed away. “Nicola,” Malcolm said. “Why won’t you look at me?”

Through her tears, he heard from her the first scrap of truth he’d heard from her since this mood of hers started. “You love me. If I look at you, I’ll see how much you love me, and it’ll break me.”

“Then break, my darling girl,” Victoria said earnestly. “Break. Let it hurt. It has to hurt. It’s supposed to hurt.” She got to her feet and stood at Nicola’s side. “Look at your husband. Look at your husband, see how much he loves you and let it all hurt. And if being loved like Malcolm loves you is what breaks you, it’s what can put you back together again.”

Malcolm took a step towards Nicola. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes.

Her hand flew to her mouth and she stifled a sob that was almost a scream. He approached with caution. “Can I give you a cuddle?” he asked her. She nodded her head, and Malcolm did not hesitate to take her into his arms and hold her tight. Over Nicola’s shoulder, he shared a pained look with Victoria, who sat back down with her face in her hands. A whole load of horrors Nicola had hidden were about to come out for Victoria to hear; Malcolm felt quite sorry for her.

Nicola’s legs failed. Malcolm sat her down in the nearest chair. He got down onto his knees and hugged her. She had gone from refusing to be touched to clawing onto him for dear life. Her face was buried into his neck as she cried uncontrollably, her body shaking as she did what she had been trying to avoid this whole time – as she broke.


	15. No Matter What It Does To Her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas was fun. Though the Paw Patrol drum and music set I got my brother's girlfriend's toddler was a MASSIVE FUCKING MISTAKE.

Malcolm stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door of number twenty-seven, Milton Road, with Bella at his side. He didn’t know how he was going to approach this. He knocked on the door without a scrap of a plan.

A woman about the same age as Nicola opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Hi,” Malcolm said. “This is gonna sound a bit mad, but stick with it, okay? I’m Malcolm. I’m married to Katie Murray’s mum. This is my daughter, Bella, and we were hoping we might be able to speak to Molly.”

A girl of about eighteen or nineteen came up behind the woman. Malcolm noted that she walked with a pronounced limp. “What’s going on, Mum?” she asked.

“This man’s Nicola’s husband,” said the woman, without removing her wary gaze from Malcolm, “and he says he wants to talk to you.”

Molly Fairchild stood next to her mother and asked Malcolm directly, “About what?”

“James Murray,” Malcolm said. “I know, Molly. I know about the money, and about what he did to Nicola, and about him trying to keep you and Katie apart. We just want to know anything you can tell us about what happened between you and James.”

“Molly?” her mother asked, her mistrust turning to sheer confusion. It became clear to Malcolm that Molly hadn’t told her parents a fucking thing. She had kept up the silence Katie asked of her. “Molly, what’s he talking about?”

Molly stepped aside and said, “Come in.” Malcolm walked in, Bella on his heels, following Molly as she led them to the living room. “You’ll have to forgive my gait. The crash made a proper mess of my right leg,” she explained as she sat down with a groan. “Mind you, better a dodgy leg than what happened to Katie.”

Malcolm sat down on the sofa opposite. “We just want to know, Molly,” he began, “what James might have said to you. We know he was aware you knew about the bank book, and Katie had to promise him you wouldn’t tell anybody. She tried to send you an email but she never got to finish it.”

“Yeah, James took her phone and laptop that night,” Molly sighed. “She told me at school the next day.” Molly eyed her mother, who had just entered the room, with apprehension, like she was scared she was about to end up in trouble. “This is my mum, Caroline,” she added.

Caroline held out her hand for Malcolm to shake, and did the same with Bella, before she sat down next to Molly.

“The night before I went to Poland,” said Molly, “James phoned me from Katie’s mobile. He was half-cut – when wasn’t he? Anyway, he wanted to know how much Katie had told me. Stupidly, I was honest and said I knew about the money, and that Katie had told me about him beating Nicola, and that he had…” she trailed away; Malcolm knew she didn’t really want to say it, but he knew to what she was referring. “He went off on one, and I should’ve kept my temper. But I didn’t. I said I would go to the police on the inset day after I came back from Auschwitz, and that he was lucky I was giving him any warning at all.”

“What did he say?” asked Malcolm.

“‘You won’t get to a police station in one piece.’”

Caroline’s mouth dropped open. “Sweetie, why didn’t you tell me? Or your father?”

Molly looked at the floor. “I didn’t want to put you in danger. Not when I knew what he did to Nicola. I thought I could deal with it myself.”

It was then that Bella spoke for the first time, and Malcolm had to wonder what she was theorising. “Molly, when your crashed your car, what happened?” she asked.

Molly looked up. “The brakes were a bit soft from the start,” she said, “but it was the first time I’d ever driven that car so I assumed it was just the way the car was. I picked up a bit of speed and when I tried to stop, the brakes failed. I remember just slamming my foot down and it hitting the floor.”

“We bought the car for her when she was at Auschwitz,” explained Caroline. “It was a surprise; Molly passed her test a couple of weeks before the trip. It was second hand and we used the week Molly was abroad to…” she said slowly. “Oh, dear Lord.”

“What?” Bella asked sharply.

“When we got it, the front brake was sticking. It needed a new brake caliper,” Caroline said.

“That was why the brakes failed?” Molly asked.

“No, we got it fixed,” Caroline replied. “But…oh, God.” Her expression was one of a woman realising she had made a fucking massive mistake. “The garages were fully booked, and we wanted the car to be ready in time for Molly coming home. We bumped into James at the petrol station, and when we mentioned the car needed a brake caliper, discs and pads, he offered to do it. Said his dad taught him how to fix cars.”

Molly stared at Caroline in horror. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

“There was no reason to tell you, sweetie,” Caroline reminded her. “As far as I knew, James was a perfectly decent man who said he knew what he was doing. I actually blamed myself for not having the car double checked for other problems with the brakes. I thought it was my fault for taking the seller’s word for it that it only needed one caliper.”

“Even after he was jailed for trying to kill Nicola?” Molly asked incredulously. “You still thought he was a perfectly decent man then?!”

“Well, no,” allowed Caroline, “but that was Nicola, not you. I thought it was just a marriage that broke down in an ugly way. I didn’t know he had any reason to try and hurt you.”

Malcolm cut into their discussion with another question. “Did the police know the brakes failed?”

“Yeah,” Molly nodded. “But they said there wasn’t any evidence of the brake pipes being cut or anything, and it was probably an unlucky fault in the car.”

“And he definitely bled the brake?” Bella asked. “Got all the air out the system, filled the brake fluid up again?”

“Yes, he definitely did that,” Caroline said firmly. “In fact, the rest of the bottle of brake fluid is still in the back porch. He bled it, test drove it, and then topped the fluid up.”

Bella leaned forwards, her expression frighteningly eager. “Now, why would he do it in that order? Why test drive the car with the brake fluid low?” Malcolm stared at her; he knew that look all too well. That was the look Bella Whyte wore when her mind was running on overdrive. “Can you show me what’s left of the brake fluid, Caroline?”

Caroline got up and left the room, and Malcolm heard her opening a cupboard. “What’re you thinking?” he asked Bella.

“I’m thinking James tampered with the brake fluid,” she said.

Caroline returned with a yellow bottle and gave it to Bella, who opened the lid. She swirled it around, looking down at it in distaste. “How long has it been open?”

“Since James did the brakes.”

“And it’s been indoors the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Then it should not bloody well look like _that_ ,” she said, tilting the bottle for Malcolm to look into. There was a layer of what looked like dirty yoghurt sitting on the bottom of the bottle. “Brake fluid’s meant to be clear and yellow, not _that_.” When Malcolm looked at her, she was staring straight into his face. “He mixed water into the brake fluid.”

“What?” Molly asked. Bella turned to the girl. “Is that what made the brakes fail?”

Bella closed the bottle and set it down on the floor. “The whole point of brake fluid is it doesn’t compress under pressure and heat. The problem with it is it absorbs water, and that’s why it gets changed when you service your car. Because, when there’s water in the brake fluid, the heat of using the brakes boils the water, the water turns to steam and the steam compresses rather than acting like it’s solid. No brakes.” Malcolm stared at her. “Grandad and Uncle Hendry,” she shrugged. Malcolm didn’t really know why it still surprised him when Bella knew things – particularly practical and cultural things – he didn’t. He should have known Charlie and Hendry would pass their knowledge on to the eldest child.

“So you’re saying that when James fixed my daughter’s car, he was actually-”

“Fucking sabotaging it,” Molly spat.

“Molly! Language!” Caroline exclaimed.

“No, Mum. That man has done _so_ much damage. He’s been stealing money from somewhere, he’s battered Nicola, and now it turns out he’s done this to me,” he gestured to her right leg, “and _killed_ _Katie_.”

It took a little while to calm Molly down, but when they did, she thanked them for coming around. Malcolm didn’t really understand why – their visit had only brought things out into the open that Molly and Caroline could have lived their whole lives never knowing. They left the bottle of brake fluid with Caroline, but Bella asked her to keep hold of it in case they needed it.

Their car journey home was silent until they were parked into the driveway. “How the fuck are ye gonnae tell Nicola this?” Bella asked with a sigh.

“I’m not,” Malcolm said decisively.

“Dad, don’t be fucking stupid!”

“She can’t take it, Bella,” he sighed, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “You didn’t fucking see her earlier. She’s not-”

“Maybe if everybody stopped fucking lying to her, she might get on a wee bit better!” Bella argued. “She should hear the truth, no matter what it does to her! Honestly, Dad. You fucking knew about me for weeks before you told Nicola. You’re not telling her we’ve got a visiting order. You’re not telling her you’re relapsing.”

“I’m not-”

“You fucking are! Don’t try and deny it, Dad! I can see it. Your face is full of anger but you’re dead in the eyes!”

“Aye, well, so might you be if your wife had just come within a bawhair of fucking killing herself, _again_!” Malcolm roared. Of all the people who had the potential to break his ability to remain calm, who would trip the wire and knock the pin out of the grenade, Bella was at the bottom of the list. “I’ve got to go in there and convince my kids everything’s fucking alright while I watch my wife falling apart! And you think it’s a fucking clever idea to tell her that her ex-husband, the man who fucking tormented her for years, effectively killed her daughter?! How the fuck do you think she’s gonna react to that?”

“I don’t know, Dad, but-”

“Exactly!” Malcolm shouted. “Exactly my fucking point! Nobody knows how Nicola’s gonna react to anything, because she doesn’t fucking tell anyone how she’s reacted until it’s too fucking late! I’m not gonna go in there and tell her this until I am fucking sure she can handle it!”

Bella laughed at him, but it wasn’t her usual musical, beautiful laugh. It was full of irritation and derision. “You’re no’ that fucking stupid!” she laughed mirthlessly. “You ken fine well she’ll never be able to handle it because who the fuck _can_ handle that?! But, Dad, she’s got to be told. You can’t just _not tell her_!”

Anger rose through him, and he stormed out of the car and left Bella sitting there. He didn’t want a fight with his daughter. It did no good to take his rage out on other people – he had learned that the hard way – and Bella wasn’t likely to just sit and take it, either. He strode through the house to the kitchen, vaguely noting that everyone was gathered in the living room, and paced the room. All the anger he had kept below the surface for weeks – the rage at hearing the reality of Nicola’s first marriage, at knowing James was trying to rock the boat, at knowing his wife was in pain beyond endurance – erupted out of him.

He kicked the stools over and slammed the door shut. The only thing he could do was walk the length of this kitchen and try not to remember the things that had happened here.

But these things _had_ happened.

This was where James had dragged Nicola out and locked her into a cupboard. It was where he had stabbed her. It was where Nicola had once tried to hang herself, and where Victoria had been forced to patch Malcolm up at New Year. It was where he had caught Ella about to drink vodka, and where he had lost his rag over a missing screw in a shelf.

The door burst open and Bella entered the room. “Dad, try and calm down,” she told him. “Come on, this, all this fucking arguing and carry on, and you ending up like this, it’s no good for anybody.”

All Malcolm could do was pace, try and pace it out of his system. Bella tried to stop him but he brushed her off. His mind was like a whirlpool, with the anger and the memories chasing one another endlessly. There was no escaping them.

“Malcolm?” This time, it was Victoria’s voice. “Malcolm, what’s wrong?”

“We had a bit o’ a barny,” Bella admitted. “He left me in the car, and he’s ended up like this.”

Victoria stepped in front of him, blocking his route to the wall. He felt her tap his cheek, and it grounded him to her – the one truly sane voice in his world. “Malcolm, you’re okay. It’s just anger, remember, and anger passes.” Her hands were tight around his wrists; Malcolm looked down into her face, and saw now how his mother-in-law cared for him. “So just think about here and now. You’re here with me and Bella. Your wife and kids, your grandchildren, your son-in-law, they’re all in the next room. Don’t let anger take over, my brilliant boy,” she implored him. “You’re better than that.”

The anger seeped away, every molecule replaced by pain as it left. Pain, he could deal with. He could even ignore it. Only anger and panic managed to put him into these spirals. For now, pain was much better than anger. He took a breath and forced the last of his fury out of him. Bella was right – his anger was unhelpful when it manifested itself like this.

Malcolm decided to distract himself with matters more important than his own self-indulgent anger. “How’s Nicola?” he asked Victoria.

Victoria sighed. “She’s not great, but I’ve been keeping an eye on her.” Malcolm took that reply calmly, for he had not expected any improvement. “Just sort yourself out and join us when you feel up to it,” Victoria told him. She smiled a little at him and left him with Bella.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Bella murmured. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t you fucking apologise,” he said. “That was me, not you.”

Bella kissed his cheek and squeezed his arm. Eventually, they went to the living room, where Bella sat down on the floor with her children and Malcolm sat beside Nicola on the couch. Victoria was right; Nicola still had that passive look of deliberately disregarding her own emotions, but she was at least looking at him. This was why he did not want to tell Nicola what he and Bella had just learned. She was barely tolerating the burden she already bore, so how could he add that piece of knowledge to the load?

That wasn’t to say that Bella was wrong; she wasn’t. Malcolm knew Nicola had to find out in the end. His problem was he didn’t know what to say, how to tell her, or when was the right time. The idea of doing more damage terrified him, but the damage was going to have to be done. At some stage, Nicola had to hear the truth, no matter what it might do to her.


	16. Tickets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to sleep but that wasn't going to happen, so I typed this up instead. And ate about half a loaf of bread toasted.

Two days after learning the truth behind Molly and Katie’s car accident, Malcolm still hadn’t figured out how to tell Nicola what happened. How was he supposed to say that? There was no right way to say it. The only way he could tell her was to just come out and say it. He just couldn’t bring himself to break her again. But he was about to attempt to, before he got distracted by the post lying on the floor.

Malcolm picked it up. There was a letter from the broadband company with his name on it and – bizarrely – an envelope addressed to Nicola, from Scotrail. It was the second time in a week he had to remind himself it was out of order to open his wife’s mail. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “What the fuck would you be getting from Scotrail? You barely use trains, never mind fucking Scottish trains.”

Nicola didn’t answer him. When she looked up at him from her position on the sofa, he saw the panic in her eyes, and knew something was very fucking wrong. His first instinct was to protect her, because when she started lying to him, everything in their world lost its place. He moved to take it from her, but she swiped it away from him, a defensive gleam in her wide eyes. Malcolm had already had enough of this and, though it went against every fibre of his being, grabbed his wife, held her firmly still and snatched the envelope out of her hands. He had scared her – that much was evident in her face – but he was too preoccupied with the fact she was hiding things from him to regret it.

When he opened it, he found tickets for the sleeper train to Edinburgh, for the eighteenth of March. He laughed despite not finding it at all funny. “Nic’la, how the fuck do you think you’re gonna manage nearly eight hours in one of those fucking tiny rooms, with no fucking way out?”

Malcolm glanced at her; he could tell she was fighting down her emotions again. He took out the tickets. There were none for the journey back, and there were three child tickets and one adult ticket. It dawned on him that Nicola had no intention of taking him with her. She stood up and tried to take the tickets out of his hands, but he was faster than she was. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded hotly. “What are you fucking gonna do in Edinburgh?! And why the eighteenth of March? That’s another fortnight!”

She was silent. Her expression was blank. Deliberately blank.

It occurred to Malcolm that Nicola didn’t know what she was going to do in Edinburgh.

“Why are you taking the kids? Why not wait until the Easter holidays to take them on a break?” he asked her. It was his hope that asking innocent-sounding questions might get some sort of answer out of her, but from the look on her face and the silence she continued to uphold, it was a hope in vain. “Why aren’t you taking me with you?” he said.

It was the only one of his questions that she answered.

“You’re not coming because you’re better off away from me,” she mumbled. “I’m leaving you. Taking the kids with me. We’ll stay in Edinburgh while we sort something out.”

Malcolm took a step back. That was not the answer he was expecting. His ears rang as his world crashed at his feet. This could not be happening. He had only just married her, for fuck’s sake. After all they’d been through, and all the love they’d shared, she was just going to walk away from him? Fuck off up to Edinburgh?

Nicola moved towards him, tears pouring down her cheeks. She held her hand to his neck and gazed up into his eyes. He tried not to let her see how much this hurt. “I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m sorry, Malcolm. I’m only doing this because I love you. I don’t want to leave you, but I have to. I’ve got to leave you to live your life without all the shit that comes with mine.” Malcolm put the tickets in his jeans pocket, knowing she could not board the sleeper train without them. “Don’t,” she cried. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

He was frozen where he stood. He barely registered Nicola’s small hand on his face or her fingers on his chest. Of all the scenarios he had played out in his head, this was not one of them. He had prepared himself to lose her to cancer, or for her to be murdered, even, but not for her to simply walk away. “I’ll…” he said, trying to make his brain and his mouth work in tandem. “I’ll…uh, I’ll go and pack my stuff. I’ll go to Bella’s, send Euan here to watch your back.”

Nicola broke down, her face in her hands. Malcolm couldn’t comfort her. He wanted to, because he loved her regardless of whether she loved him, but he couldn’t reach out and touch her. She regained control of her speech and sobbed, “I’ve just told you I’m leaving you, and your first fucking priority is to keep me safe.”

Why wasn’t he fighting this? Why was he letting her go? He didn’t want to. Fucking hell, that was the last thing he wanted to do. But he didn’t know how to stop her, other than take her train tickets. He didn’t know what he could say to her to make her change her mind. The only thing he could come up with was, “Stay. Nicola. Stay.”

Her lips crashed suddenly into his. She had never, ever kissed him like this before, even when she was using her kiss to hide from him. It was rough. Desperate. She dragged him into her body, and they clashed so hard that he knew it had to have hurt her where they had cut her open, and yet she made no noise that gave away any physical pain. And all the while, he was kissing his wife like she might vanish at any moment, even though he knew he was only making it harder on himself when the time came for her to leave. He committed every inch of her to memory. Every curve, every kiss, every breathless moan, he burned into his memory.

The softness of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the way the crook of her neck melted into his hand…he could not do without it. He could not bear to lose her. He kissed her with every ounce of passion he had in him, telling her without words how much he needed her to stay. It was the rawest, most painful kiss they’d ever shared. There was no beauty in it. His teeth caught her lip as he started to lose control of his coordination, adrift in his wife and all he stood to lose. Her response was to run her fingers in his hair and put a hand on his back, pulling him closer than he could ever have thought possible.

They kissed like they would never kiss again – and perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps this was the last time he would ever feel her lips on his, her fingers in his hair, her hand holding him close. Maybe this was their last kiss. Malcolm couldn’t bear the thought.

Nicola pulled back and rested her forehead against his. “Stay with me,” she begged him. “Stay with me until I go. It’s fucking selfish, I know, but give me this one last thing. Give me the time I have left with you.”

“Don’t go,” he countered. “Just stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Then take me with you,” he said.

“Malcolm,” she said, “please don’t do this.”

“Why are you going?”

“I told you.”

“No,” he replied, “you told me fuck all. You don’t believe I’m better without you, for the fucking good reason that it isn’t fucking true.” He pushed her hair behind her ears. “Have you told your mum?”

“No.”

Malcolm shook his head to himself. “You’re moving to Scotland and you’re not telling your fucking mother?”

Nicola turned her back on him, sobbing violently; the sound ripped his heart open, and it was all he could do not to break down himself. There had to be something he could do. There had to be. This could not be the way he lost her. So, he decided to take her to the one person who might have a hope in fucking hell of getting some real sense out of her. He took her hand and pulled her to the front door and put her coat on her. “Where are we going?” she asked, still crying her heart out.

“Out,” he said simply.

For the whole journey, Nicola did not stop crying, and Malcolm repeatedly swallowed back his own tears. He tried to work out why he wasn’t angry with her. He had every right to be angry with her. But how could he be angry when this was killing her? Nicola didn’t want to do this. If she did, she wouldn’t be sitting in his car in this inconsolable state.

“No, Malcolm,” she cried when she realised where he was taking her. “Please, no.”

“Yes,” he said. “You have to tell her. You can’t fucking leave that for me to do.”

He pretty much had to drag Nicola to Victoria’s front door. When Victoria opened the door, she ushered them in, watching Nicola continue to break down with a look of horror on her face. “What’s happened?” she asked Malcolm as Nicola proceeded into the living room and practically collapsed into an armchair.

“Nicola’s got something to tell you.”

“What, about James? She’s already told me about the night he raped her. What else could he possibly have done that would put her into this?”

Malcolm chose not to answer that. Nicola had told her mother about that night because Malcolm left her with no choice, but she had not disclosed any of the innumerable previous incidents, or how she had prevented James from turning on the children. Malcolm wished Nicola would tell Victoria everything, but it had to be up to her. He only took it out of her hands to save her life.

He took the tickets out of his pocket and gave them to Victoria. She looked through them, and then turned her gaze to her daughter. “Edinburgh, Nicola?” she asked. “And why only one adult ticket?”

Nicola wasn’t capable of speech. At this stage, Malcolm believed she wasn’t even capable of thought. She just sat there crying uncontrollably, trembling like she was sitting in sub-zero temperatures. “Fucking tell her, then,” Malcolm ordered his wife. He had to be harsh. He had to be tough, or he might end up in the same state as Nicola.

“Tell me what?” Victoria said, her tone sharp.

Nicola finally looked up at her mother and choked out, “I’m leaving.”

“What?!” Victoria shouted. “Nicola, be sensible, for fuck’s sake! You’ve had surgery, you’ve got cancer, you’ve got mental health issues, and you think you can just fuck off to Edinburgh on your own with three children in tow?!”

Malcolm sat down on the sofa, threw his keys onto the coffee table, and looked at the floor. He didn’t know what, but something was wrong about all this. He needed Nicola. She kept him going, even when he was running on empty. And he needed his children. He needed his children like he needed air to breathe. And Nicola knew that. Nicola knew Malcolm loved those kids beyond any kind of measurement. She wouldn’t take them from him. She wasn’t a cruel woman; she would not choose to take his kids from him unless there was something hideously wrong.

“You’re running,” he realised aloud. “You’re fucking running, Nicola. Who’s chasing you?”

“Nobody,” she said. Her tears were quiet now, though they still flowed down her face relentlessly. “I told you, Malcolm. I’m leaving you to live your life.”

“And you’re abandoning your career?” Victoria asked, stepping forward into the middle of the room. “Pulling the children out of school before the end of term? I don’t buy it, Nicola. You’re not doing this because you want to leave your husband. You’re doing this because you’re fucking scared of something. I’ve known you forty-five years, girl. I know when you’re running.”

Nicola met her mother’s eyes, and Malcolm saw fear, terrible fear, there.

She got to her feet and picked up Malcolm’s keys, and headed towards the door. Malcolm let out a short and humourless laugh. “So that’s it? You’re just going to leave like that?” Nicola ignored him, opening the door and walking out onto the garden path. “Stop!” Malcolm roared. “Just stop!”

She stopped.

“I just want the truth, Nic’la,” he said. The air was as still as she was. “What are you so scared of?”

“Nothing,” she replied. She turned around, a steely mask covering her face. “On the eighteenth, I am taking my kids-”

“Our kids,” Malcolm cut across her, but she didn’t even acknowledge him.

“I am taking my kids and I am going to Edinburgh,” she continued. “Whether you stay with me until I go, well, that’s up to you.”

Malcolm looked at Victoria for help. She stepped towards Nicola. “Darling, come back inside. You’re too upset to drive. I think you know that.”

Nicola took a breath. “I’ll come back inside if you two stop trying to fucking talk me out of leaving,” she said.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, because he didn’t want to stop trying to keep her close. He wanted to tell her he loved her too much to let her go, and how he would never be okay again if he lost her, especially if he lost her like this. “Fine,” he unwillingly relented, purely because he could not let her get behind the wheel of a car when she wasn’t thinking straight. “Fine. But just come in.”

Once they got her inside, Malcolm and Victoria stood at the door. “I’ve never seen her do this,” Malcolm said. “This isn’t her. This isn’t what my wife fucking does.”

“Well, kid, she’s doing it,” Victoria sighed, “and you can’t stop her unless you find out _why_.”


	17. Broken

Malcolm flung the front door of the house open, and searched the bottom floor for his wife. When she was nowhere to be found, he checked upstairs, finding her asleep in bed, presumably resting ahead of a long night of claustrophobic anxiety aboard the overnight train. That didn’t stop him. Nothing was going to stop this conversation. He wrenched the curtains open and bellowed, “Why the _fuck_ didn’t you just tell me the fucking truth, you fucking stupid, retarded-”

Nicola sat up groggily, her hair frizzy with the static electricity from her pillow, looking shocked by his outburst. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You,” he snarled into her face, leaning over her. “I’ll ask you one last time. What was that phone call on our wedding day? And bear in mind that our situation is now fucking dire, thanks to you and your inability to tell the fucking truth!”

She was wide-eyed, terrified by his sudden rage. As he hauled an overnight bag out of the wardrobe, he realised he had scared her silent, and rendered her unable to answer the question he asked her in that moment.

He could not put _all_ the blame on her. He was the one who had gone behind her back and got Angela Heaney to dig into James’ money laundering. But if he had known the consequences, the danger that expose now put them in, he never would have done it. If he had known what Nicola had known, he would have done things differently. And he should have known better than to think Angela wouldn’t put her career first, and he should have known she would give the story to her editor before she gave it to him. He had been naïve on that front, thinking she would ask his permission to print it rather than give him the information and print it anyway. That was stupid on his part. But if he had known the whole fucking story, he would not have enlisted her to help at all.

He started folding his clothes into that bag, knowing Nicola had her and the kids’ bags packed for days. “What are you doing?” she asked him with a frown.

“We can’t fucking stay here,” he replied. “We’ve got to go away, even if it’s just until the police sort things out.”

“We’ve been through this,” Nicola sighed, getting out of bed. “You’re not coming with me to Edinburgh.”

“We’re not going to fucking Edinburgh,” he retorted. “We’re going to Dunkeld, where Patrick and Dannah will meet us and take us to Tot.”

“Patrick and Dannah? Tot?”

“Bella’s cousin and his wife. Don’t actually know what relation Tot is but they’re fucking Travellers. _They_ probably don’t even fucking know anymore,” Malcolm said, though in the back of his mind, he did try to map out the family tree and got no further forward. “We’ll spend the night with them and then we’ll head north.”

“North? Why are we going north?” Nicola froze, and he watched the horrified realisation spread over her face. “How did you find out?” she whispered.

Malcolm advanced on her. “We went to fucking see him,” he informed her, his tone brutal. “Me and Bella.”

“What?! Why?!” she shouted. “Why would you do that?!”

“Because he is out to get you and, funnily enough, I wanted to protect my fucking wife!” Malcolm thundered. His voice bounced off the walls like a ricocheting bullet. “He tried to get Bella’s cousin to hurt you, or at least scare you! And because, Nicola, _he_ is the one responsible for Katie dying!” Nicola now looked utterly confused. “He fucked the brakes on Molly’s car because she threatened to go to the police. That was why he fucking blamed you for her death – he knew that car was going to crash.”

“James killed Katie?”

“Oh, that got your fucking attention,” he snapped ruthlessly. “Yes, my dear. Your halfway fucking demented ex-husband effectively killed your fucking daughter, trying to cover his tracks! That was why he went off his fucking nut at you! Katie was never supposed to be in that car! He was keeping her grounded until he got the news Molly had fucking crashed, and you went and got soft on her, didn’t you?!”

Malcolm regretted that as soon as he said it. He didn’t blame Nicola for what happened to Katie. Not in the slightest. That hadn’t come out the way he wanted it to; Nicola stepped back, her emotional response taking over her whole body as she stumbled with nowhere to go. This wasn’t how he had wanted to tell her. That look in her eyes…he knew then that whatever had been holding her together up until now, he had just broken it.

* * *

 

** The previous day: **

Malcolm stalked into Number 10, still angry to his very core. How could she do it this way? How could she say she would pick the children up from school tomorrow and just go? How could she take the chance to hold her one last time, to hold his children one last time, away from him?

Unable to hold back his temper, he threw his coffee at the door. The contents of the paper cup spilled across the floor as it fell with a dull thud. He realised too late that he had let out a roar of anger and frustration; Sam, his assistant, opened the door and stepped over the mess. “Malcolm?” she asked. “What was that in aid of?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning his back on her to go to his desk. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, Sam.”

He could tell she did so grudgingly, but she left him alone.

It was only when Jamie showed up five minutes later that Malcolm realised his outburst had worried Sam more than she had been willing to tell him. “What’s the matter with you, ya grumpy old bastard?”

Malcolm glared at him, but decided that he was going to have to tell Jamie at some point, and now was as good a time as any. “Nicola’s leaving,” he said. “She’s taking the kids tomorrow and she’s fucking leaving.”

“What d’you mean, she’s fucking leaving?!” exclaimed Jamie. “Where’s she gonnae go?”

“Edinburgh. She’s booked the sleeper.”

“Nicola, fucking claustrophobe extraordinaire, who can’t manage a normal fucking train, is gonnae take the sleeper to fucking Edinburgh?” Jamie laughed. Malcolm set his gaze on Jamie, who instantly backtracked. “Not that your wife walking out on you is funny,” he added. “What happened?”

Malcolm sighed. He couldn’t tell Jamie the ins and outs of the past month, and he didn’t know himself the real reason for Nicola’s decision to leave, but he could tell him that it didn’t sit right with him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I honestly don’t fucking know. She’s running from something. Even fucking Victoria reckons she’s running from something, and it isn’t me.”

“And there’s no way of talking her out of it?”

“What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past two weeks?!”

“You’ve known she’s gonnae do this for a fortnight?” Jamie asked. “Like, she told you in advance?”

Malcolm gave a groan. “I didn’t give her a fucking choice. The train tickets came in the post and I opened them in front of her, because I knew she was fucking hiding something. She had a bit of a breakdown a couple of days before and I wanted to know what she was fucking doing this time.”

There was a knock at the door, and Bella stepped in, dodging the pool of coffee just as Sam had done. “Hey, Dad. I just came down to see what you want to say to thon moich gurrach tomorrow.” She sat herself down in the chair next to Jamie, who stared at her. Malcolm hadn’t told Bella her stepmother was leaving. He knew the loss would hurt her almost as much as it hurt him, and he didn’t want to see the look on her face; Jamie picked up on that instantly, and shot Malcolm a look that told of his incredulity and disapproval at his approach to parenting his grown-up daughter.

“Malcolm,” he said. “You’ve got tae tell her.”

Bella sat up straight. “Tell me what?” Malcolm looked at her. He knew Jamie was right, but he didn’t want to do it. “Dad? What’ve ye got tae tell me?”

Malcolm closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her face when she heard it. “Nicola is leaving. Tomorrow. She’s moving to Edinburgh with the kids.”

“Why? Did yous fall out or-”

“Apparently,” Jamie cut in, “she’s running from something.”

Malcolm opened his eyes. Bella said the one name that had to be linked, directly or indirectly, to Nicola’s rash decision-making: “James.”

“But he’s jailed,” Jamie reminded them, his expression confused.

“We think,” Bella said, “well, we _know_ he’s been getting someone to threaten Nicola. Low-level shite – cards with creepy messages, flowers, a photo that proved she was being followed. He tried to get my cousin to do it but Patrick told him to fuck off. That’s why me and Dad are visiting him in prison tomorrow morning.”

Jamie did not like that idea at all; that much was blindingly obvious. He was quite protective of Bella, with whom he had instantly hit it off when she took over the Scottish Office. They were as close to best mates as Bella was capable of sustaining. “I’m not sure that’s-”

“The only way to find out why he’s doing it is to ask him,” Bella said firmly. “It’s no use speculating.”

“Bella, he’s mental.”

“I’m not scared of him,” she told Jamie. “He’s pathetic. I was more scared of Alasdair the last time he threw a fucking toddler tantrum.”

That night, Malcolm found himself clinging to the children. He had made sure he left work in time to spend the night with them – no politician could fuck up badly enough to convince him to sacrifice his last night with his wife and children. He sat with them most of the night, reminding himself not to let them know anything was wrong, for they still did not know they were leaving tomorrow. Nicola wasn’t giving them the opportunity to protest, though Malcolm couldn’t help but wonder if they would board the train without being physically dragged onto it.

And as angry as he was with Nicola for her decision to let him return to an empty home tomorrow, when they went to bed, he kissed her and held her tight; he’d had two weeks to prepare for this, and he still could not accept it. Not when he knew leaving caused her the same agony it caused him, and that she was doing it all for the wrong reasons. If she had been able to say she did not love him, he might have been able to deal with that. But she hadn’t. She had done the complete opposite: told him she was leaving because she loved him. Whatever – whoever – was chasing her had to be big, bad and very fucking ugly. It felt like Edinburgh was more a place to hide than a place to start again. It was where she could take the kids and hide, while convincing them they were building a new life in a new city. It was a city in which she could find a new job, possibly at a university or even at Holyrood, and pretend the last two years never happened.

Malcolm kissed Nicola’s forehead and said, “Even when you’re up there, don’t you ever fucking forget I love you.”

“Don’t,” she mumbled.

“No,” he replied. “No, you don’t get to fucking tell me what I can’t say. And if knowing I love you makes it harder for you to leave, so much the fucking better. This shouldn’t be fucking easy for you.”

“I don’t want to go,” she admitted, her face buried into his shoulder.

“Then don’t.”

He knew that wouldn’t work; he had tried it a couple of times with absolutely no success. He just needed her to know he didn’t want to let her go, and he only did so because she wasn’t giving him any other option. There was a line he would not cross – the same line James Murray had pole vaulted over. He would not control his wife like James did, or abuse her to keep her near, or destroy her to keep her feeling incapable of independence. It would be as wrong to make her stay for the reasons as it was that she was leaving in fear of some external issue. Their marriage was not the problem here, in the sense of their relationship. They were closer than Malcolm could ever had dreamed they could become. Even as she was leaving him, she was close to him.

Nicola stirred in his arms, and Malcolm felt her press herself closer to him. The idea this bed would be empty tomorrow night shattered him. That was what did it. For the first time in the fortnight he had known she was leaving, he let himself cry for the loss of his wife – but silently, because she could never know exactly what this did to him. Though he wanted it to be hard for her, he could not make it impossible, if this was what she thought was the right thing to do. He could only hope that, in time, she could come back to him.


	18. Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooooo! 
> 
> This was meant to get done yesterday but, after my dear brother's shitty behaviour, I was so anxious I couldn't do anything at all. 
> 
> I have to say thanks to Tereshkova for helping me nail down just what James has been up to. It was much appreciated!
> 
> It's about to get darker. I apologise in advance for the damage done to certain characters in future chapters. Also, if you would like a list of locations so you can find them on a map and look up photos, I can give you that - it might make what happens later on more understandable/vivid.

Malcolm left for work early that morning. He didn’t want to leave at all, but he knew he had to do it before anyone else got out of bed, or he never would. He had a meeting with Angela Heaney at half-past nine, and then he and Bella would head for the prison, calling it ‘early lunch’.

When he, Angela and Bella congregated in the Scottish Office – all Bella’s civil servants were scared of her, never mind Malcolm, and so would not disturb them unless it was vital – Malcolm was surprised to find Angela had gathered a fair bit of information. “From what I’ve been able to find out, the guards are employed from two companies. One is completely legit – most other PFI companies use them – but the other is one I’d never heard of: Blair Security Services Limited.”

Malcolm snorted. “That sounds about right.”

“The Director of Blair is one Finn Thomas,” Angela said.

“Finn,” Malcolm repeated. “I’m pretty sure that’s his brother-in-law. His sister’s husband. He testified in court that James is normally a decent guy. Part of the plan to get him fucking leniency. Fucking worked, too,” he growled, recalling the abominably short sentence of four years and four months James had been handed, and that was before they cut it for pleading guilty.

Bella sat down in a chair and rested her temple on her hand. “Correct,” Angela smiled. “I checked it out – both companies are registered to the same address in Surrey. Robert Armitage is the man who was joint head of the department with James, but when James was convicted they never replaced him. My contact reckons he’s the one keeping this thing going, since Armitage now has full run of the department. Now, I hit a dead end there. There seemed to be nothing connecting Blair and Tullibardine apart from that address, until you told me to check for the numbers 1715 and 1746.”

“I knew it,” Bella laughed bitterly. “The cunt’s got a heid so inflated I’m surprised his feet stay on the fucking floor.”

“Blair is owned by 1746 Holdings. Tullibardine is owned by 1715 Holdings. Both are Jersey companies, and both are owned by another Jersey company – Atholl Holdings – and _that_ is owned by a Jersey trust, in the name of Banvie Trust. Its trustees are Finn Thomas and Yvonne Oldman. Thomas is James’ brother-in-law and Oldman is-”

“Finn’s sister,” Malcolm cut across her. “Not blood related to James, and they don’t share the same name, so it’s not fucking obvious it’s James doing it all.”

Angela nodded. “She’s the registered Director of Tullibardine, too. And the Banvie Trust is administered by a small Jersey Trust company, Tilt Trust. All the Jersey companies are registered to their address. After that, I can’t get any further up the chain. Can’t get the names of the settlors or beneficiaries. All I can say is all the shares belong to Banvie Trust.”

“And the money?” Malcolm asked.

“Goes from Albany to Blair, then I would assume Blair to 1746 and then from 1746 to Atholl Holdings. Atholl Holdings would then pass it down to 1715, who would pay it to Tullibardine; they’d probably split it two ways, between Murray and Armitage. Half into accounts in the name of Katie, Ella, Sophie and Ben Murray, which you’ve already found out. If Armitage is doing the same, it’ll be children’s savings accounts under the names of Leonie and Sasha Armitage.”

“Armitage’s bairns,” Bella said, getting to her feet.

“I’d assume so, yeah,” Angela concurred.

“The Banvie Burn runs past Blair Castle, and the River Tilt flows right through the fucking village. He’s taken all the names from there. The man’s not got much imagination, does he?”

Malcolm had to agree, and silently cursed Nicola for ever taking him up to that place and making it so easy for him to do it like this. “You said they’ve been sourcing guards from Blair.”

“Ah, now you’ve hit the part that’s really gonna get him in trouble,” Angela smiled. “Blair doesn’t employ any guards. As far as I can tell, they don’t employ anybody. They’ve been understaffing the prison and telling Albany they’ve been keeping the guard to inmate ratio at the right level.”

Malcolm realised now this was an utter mess. The Government – specifically DoSAC – had given a PFI contract that was being very much abused. The only thing that kept Nicola out of trouble here was that James didn’t work for Albany when the contract was awarded, and Nicola wasn’t a Cabinet minister. That, and James did try to kill her – he was hardly likely to be sharing a criminal enterprise with a wife he was more than willing to murder.

He leaned back in his chair. “That explains why James panicked when Katie found the bank book. It links him to all this fucking madness after he’s managed to keep his own name out of it. And if he was making prisons unsafe in the process, on top of breaking the law by actually taking the money in the first place, he must’ve been fucking losing the plot when Molly said she was going to the police.”

“Molly?” Angela asked sharply. “The girl who was driving the car when Katie Murray died?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re implying James had something to do with that crash?”

Bella pushed her hair back and said, “We fucking _know_ he had something to do with it. The police put it down to an inexperienced driver and a faulty old car at the time, but we found out James Murray replaced a brake caliper on it the week before Molly crashed. But don’t print that,” she added hastily. “That’s strictly off the record until the police know about it.”

Angela nodded as she picked up her bag and put on her coat. “I’ve got to get back to office. I’ve given the story to my editor – he says it’ll be printed on Monday.”

Malcolm glared at her. “I thought I fucking said to ask me before printing any of this?”

“I’ve got a career to build,” she reminded him with a shrug. “And there’s nothing there to implicate you or Nicola.” Malcolm kept up his glower, but Angela didn’t waver under it. “It prints on Monday. I can’t go to my editor and tell him we can’t print it because Malcolm Tucker doesn’t like it.”

“You fucking do that all the time!”

“This is different. This is breaking open fraud in a PFI contract, awarded by the Government. Nothing on Earth’s going to stop my editor printing that. But you and Nicola are in the clear – she had nothing to do with it. Anyone with eyes knows that. Stop worrying. It’ll be fine,” she said. Malcolm guessed her tone was meant to be reassuring, but he just found it fucking patronising.

* * *

 

Malcolm had never visited anyone in prison before. It was a bit like fucking Fort Knox to him. Bella, however, must have visited people in prison before, because she handled the whole process with a relaxed ease that almost frightened Malcolm. And with ID shown, fingerprints scanned, clothes searched and electronics surrendered, they eventually got into the visiting area.

James Murray sat at a table in the middle of the room. When he saw Malcolm and Bella, he stood up and took Bella into his arms with a fucking smug look on his face. “You’re prettier than your cousin, that’s for sure,” he said quietly as he pulled back.

Bella grinned up at him, her expression one of utter loathing. “Touch me again and I’ll break off your arm and hit you in the balls with it,” she said through her false smile, her voice coming through her clenched teeth. Malcolm didn’t dare go within punching distance of James; he didn’t want kicked out of here before getting anything out of him.

They sat down. “So,” James smiled. “Bella tells me you’ve had enough of Nicola already. And you’ve only been married a month!”

“Not for much longer,” Malcolm said darkly. He had to remind himself he was playing a part, and he had to play it well. “She’s moving to Edinburgh.”

A smirk played on James’ mouth. “Edinburgh’s not far enough, is it? You’d rather she vacated the planet.”

Bella didn’t let Malcolm answer. In that moment, Malcolm was infinitely grateful that his daughter knew him so well. “I do have one question, though,” she said. “Malcolm found a bank book with seventy grand in the account. Where the fuck did you get that kind of money?” she asked. Her tone was conversational, charming. Malcolm knew he had to let her do the leg work, for if James was going to tell them anything, it would be to impress a beautiful woman.

James laughed. “They’re thick as pig shit at Albany.” Malcolm saw Bella flinch, and guessed pigs were one of those animals she could not call by their proper name. “Tell them you’re using two companies, take half the money for yourself, send out just enough guards to keep the prison functioning. They believe anything we tell them. You’d think they’d check once in a while, the morons,” he chuckled. “I’m guessing you’re no saint yourself, are you, Bella? I can just imagine the naughty things you’ve got up to in your time.”

“The only time I was ever arrested was for brawling with my stepbrother on the street,” Bella retorted. Malcolm raised an eyebrow at her. “Night out in Aberdeen that went a wee bit awry. Gordon came and picked us up the next morning. Mum made him leave us in the cells overnight to teach us a lesson.”

The more he looked at James, the more Malcolm despised him. There was clearly no fucking trace of remorse in him, for anything that he’d done. He wanted out of there as quickly as he could, and was in no humour for listening to James try and chat up his daughter. “What is it you need us to do, James?”

“Nothing,” he smiled.

“Nothing?” Malcolm repeated. “Then why fucking invite us here?”

“I wanted to tell you I’m not a fucking idiot,” he replied. “I know who you are, Bella. Funnily enough, my contacts on the outside saw you on your father’s wedding night. Giggling ‘I love you, Dad’ was a bit of a giveaway. And as for you,” he added, now looking directly at Malcolm, “well, you stayed with Nicola every day she was in hospital, and you’ve had time off work to look after her. That’s not a husband who hates his wife.” James leaned forward, a sneering grin betraying his malevolent nature. “And, I know Angela Heaney has dug up our little scheme at Albany, and I know what will be printed on Monday. You should really tell her to check her sources – half of that department is still wanking to my tune. So I called you here to give you a head start. I _will_ fucking win, but a head start makes it more fun.”

Malcolm scowled at him. “What the fuck are you on about, you fucking demented, bobble-headed lunatic?”

James stared at him for a moment, and burst out laughing. “Oh, that is fucking _brilliant_!” he chortled. “She hasn’t told you, has she? Classic fucking Nicola. She’s known since your wedding day.” Malcolm froze. What did James know about that phone call? “Christ, you’re fucking stupid. Why do you think Nicola’s running to Edinburgh? Think about it. Four years and four months. A third off for a guilty plea. Takes it down to two years and ten months. Half in prison and half on licence, so I’m in here a year and five months, including time in remand. And the best part about waiting for licence rather than trying for HDC? No tag.” Malcolm felt the colour drain from his face. “I’m out of here on Sunday.”

Malcolm realised with a sickening jolt of his stomach that this was what an anaesthetised Nicola had been mumbling about.

James. Twenty. ‘He’s got…’

James was getting out. On the twentieth of March. And Nicola had known.

Malcolm stood up and fought the impulse to hit James; Bella got up and held his arm. James rose, too, and reached out to touch Bella’s hair, his grin predatory.

Bella moved quicker than Malcolm knew was humanly possible. She twisted James’ arm behind his back and knocked him onto his knees. “You know that stereotype that Travellers and Gypsies can fucking fight you dead?” she snarled into his ear. “It’s not a fucking stereotype. Fucking remember that when you’re playing your fucking twisted games with _my_ family.”

A guard ran over to assist. “Murray!” the guard shouted. “Behave yourself!” Bella released James, and the guard threw him back into his chair.

When the guard returned to the walls, out of earshot, James smiled up at Malcolm and Bella. “Run.”

Bella dragged Malcolm out of the room. She collected their belongings and got them into the car, and started to drive. “Patrick and Dannah are staying at Luncarty. I’ll phone the pub there and tell the landlord to tell Patrick to meet us in Dunkeld tonight. We’ll stay there tonight and sort out where we go from there.”

Malcolm’s ability to think came back to him. “Aoife. You’ve got to take Aoife with you.”

“I know,” Bella assured him calmly. “Victoria as well. I’ll stop in at hers and help her pack a bag, get her neighbour to dog sit. She can come up with us – we’ll take Euan’s car. Plenty of room for six of us. You get Nicola, pick up the kids and take them. We’ll meet you at Dunkeld. Nicola can stay with Tot in the kier,” she planned for him, “since she’s still no’ well. The rest of us can divvy up who’s staying inside and who’ll go tae the bow camp when we get there.”

“Molly,” Malcolm groaned. “He’ll go after her as well.”

“It’s okay,” Bella said. “I’ll call their landline while I’m waiting on Victoria packing, tell them to get out of London. Get out of the country, if they can.”

Malcolm watched Bella, amazed by her cool head. “What about the Prime Minister?”

“Tell him there’s a family funeral and we’re going to Lochmaddy or Stornoway for it,” Bella replied. “He’s English – the Western Isles are a fucking different planet to that lot. He’ll probably assume we’ll need a fucking week to get there.”

Malcolm, unable to trust himself to phone the Prime Minister, started an email as Bella continued to drive through London.

_Tom,_

_Bella Whyte and I have to go to a family funeral in Lochmaddy. North Uist (get a fucking map and learn the names of the Hebrides, for fuck’s sake) so we’ll need to get ferries and all that shit. We’re leaving this afternoon and should be back next week, weather dependent. You know what the ferries are like. Well, you don’t, but half the time they don’t fucking run, and the other half they’re fucking late. Jamie’s in charge until I get back. Don’t fuck up – I will hear about it, even on North Uist._

_Malcolm_

Bella pulled up outside Malcolm’s home. “Right, I’ll phone Euan and tell him to go and get Eilidh. Aoife can watch Alasdair and pack for the kids. I’ll go and grab Victoria, and we’ll go back to mine, get everybody and everything into the car. I’ll call you when we leave, okay?” she asked him. Malcolm got the unpleasant and distinct impression she had done this sort of thing before – she was so calm and so collected that she fucking _must_ have had to run like this once upon a time. She kissed his cheek and told him, “Go. Get Nicola, get the kinchins, and head north.”

He nodded and dived out the car. Now that he was thinking about it, he was able to appreciate how fucking bad this situation was. His anger with Nicola flared suddenly as it occurred to his racing mind that if Nicola had just fucking told him James was getting out of prison, this never would have happened. It could have been dealt with in a more contained manner, and not explode into a situation where they were going to have to run.

Malcolm flung the front door of the house open, and searched the bottom floor for his wife. When she was nowhere to be found, he checked upstairs, finding her asleep in bed, presumably resting ahead of a long night of claustrophobic anxiety aboard the overnight train. That didn’t stop him. Nothing was going to stop this conversation. He wrenched the curtains open and bellowed, “Why the  _fuck_  didn’t you just tell me the fucking truth, you fucking stupid, retarded-”

Nicola sat up groggily, her hair frizzy with the static electricity from her pillow, looking shocked by his outburst. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You,” he snarled into her face, leaning over her. “I’ll ask you one last time. What was that phone call on our wedding day? And bear in mind that our situation is now fucking dire, thanks to you and your inability to tell the fucking truth!”

She was wide-eyed, terrified by his sudden rage. As he hauled an overnight bag out of the wardrobe, he realised he had scared her silent, and rendered her unable to answer the question he asked her in that moment.

He could not put  _all_  the blame on her. He was the one who had gone behind her back and got Angela Heaney to dig into James’ money laundering. But if he had known the consequences, the danger that expose now put them in, he never would have done it. If he had known what Nicola had known, he would have done things differently. And he should have known better than to think Angela wouldn’t put her career first, and he should have known she would give the story to her editor before she gave it to him. He had been naïve on that front, thinking she would ask his permission to print it rather than give him the information and print it anyway. That was stupid on his part. But if he had known the whole fucking story, he would not have enlisted her to help at all.

He started folding his clothes into that bag, knowing Nicola had her and the kids’ bags packed for days. “What are you doing?” she asked him with a frown.

“We can’t fucking stay here,” he replied. “We’ve got to go away, even if it’s just until the police sort things out.”

“We’ve been through this,” Nicola sighed, getting out of bed. “You’re not coming with me to Edinburgh.”

“We’re not going to fucking Edinburgh,” he retorted. “We’re going to Dunkeld, where Patrick and Dannah will meet us and take us to Tot.”

“Patrick and Dannah? Tot?”

“Bella’s cousin and his wife. Don’t actually know what relation Tot is but they’re fucking Travellers.  _They_  probably don’t even fucking know anymore,” Malcolm said, though in the back of his mind, he did try to map out the family tree and got no further forward. “We’ll spend the night with them and then we’ll head north.”

“North? Why are we going north?” Nicola froze, and he watched the horrified realisation spread over her face. “How did you find out?” she whispered.

Malcolm advanced on her. “We went to fucking see him,” he informed her, his tone brutal. “Me and Bella.”

“What?! Why?!” she shouted. “Why would you do that?!”

“Because he is out to get you and, funnily enough, I wanted to protect my fucking wife!” Malcolm thundered. His voice bounced off the walls like a ricocheting bullet. “He tried to get Bella’s cousin to hurt you, or at least scare you! And because, Nicola,  _he_  is the one responsible for Katie dying!” Nicola now looked utterly confused. “He fucked the brakes on Molly’s car because she threatened to go to the police. That was why he fucking blamed you for her death – he knew that car was going to crash.”

“James killed Katie?”

“Oh, that got your fucking attention,” he snapped ruthlessly. “Yes, my dear. Your halfway fucking demented ex-husband effectively killed your fucking daughter, trying to cover his tracks! That was why he went off his fucking nut at you! Katie was never supposed to be in that car! He was keeping her grounded until he got the news Molly had fucking crashed, and you went and got soft on her, didn’t you?!”

Malcolm regretted that as soon as he said it. He didn’t blame Nicola for what happened to Katie. Not in the slightest. That hadn’t come out the way he wanted it to; Nicola stepped back, her emotional response taking over her whole body as she stumbled with nowhere to go. This wasn’t how he had wanted to tell her. That look in her eyes…he knew then that whatever had been holding her together up until now, he had just broken it.

Though the anger did not leave him, it was drowned by his love for his wife, and it was that love that drove him to seize Nicola by the arms and say to her, “It’s not your fucking fault, okay? I know that. And I know you need to process it, and that means you’ll have to hurt all over again but, Nic’la, I need you to put it to one side. Just for now. I need you to go and pick Ben and Sophie up. I’ll pick Ella up, and I’ll meet you back here.”

“My mum,” Nicola managed to choke out. “He’ll go after-”

“It’s okay,” he promised her, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Bella’s picking her up. We’re all going to Dunkeld tonight, okay? _All_ of us.” Nicola nodded her head, and Malcolm could see her strength splintering. “Go. Go and get Ben and Sophie.”


	19. Dunkeld

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

The kids were confused, but there was nothing Malcolm could do to remedy that without scaring Ella half to death. Though she outwardly despised James, Malcolm knew the girl was also absolutely petrified of him; after all, she had been the one who had stood between her parents while one swung a knife at the other. Sophie and Ben would be scared too, of course, but it was Ella Malcolm believed would take the worst reaction to the news her father was out of prison in less than two days, and had them backed into a corner where, no matter their action or inaction, they were in danger.

“But _why_ , Dad?” Ella pressed him as he put her coat on her. “Why are we going to Scotland?”

“Call it a holiday,” he said.

She turned and looked up at him, making no effort to disguise the fact she did not believe him at all. With a look of sheer determination, she sat down on the doorstep and folded her arms. “I’m sick of being lied to,” she said, “so I’m not leaving until you tell me why you’re taking me out of school to go to Scotland!”

Malcolm groaned to himself. He did not have fucking time for this. He crouched down in front of her and took in her face. It was so like Nicola’s, with that same ability to both exude and disguise emotion. “Look, Ella,” he sighed, “something’s gone wrong, okay? And we, and your granny, and Bella and her lot all need to get out of London for now.”

“What’s gone wrong?”

“I can’t tell you,” he replied. “But it’s serious, or we wouldn’t be going anywhere. You’ve just got to trust me.”

“I’m not a baby,” she reminded him. “I know what I can and can’t tell Ben and Sophie. But Dad, if you make me sit in the back of the car trying to figure out what’s happened, it’ll just upset me more than anything else you could tell me. Not knowing is worse.”

Malcolm’s instinct was to ask Nicola to make the decision. She was Ella’s mother, after all. But the weight of the metal band on his wrist reminded he was now as much her parent as Nicola was, and far more than James, and he was allowed to make this decision. He could not cop out by saying it was not his child – Ella was his child, through her own choice. He had to decide, here and now, whether to terrify Ella or let her imagination run away with her.

Ella watched him, waiting for an answer. Malcolm knew what he had to do; he couldn’t leave her for eight hours in the car, worrying herself sick with scenarios of her own making. “If I tell you, I need you to _stay calm_ ,” he warned her, “and do _not_ fucking tell your brother and sister. Can you do that?”

She hesitated but said, “Yeah. I can do that.”

Malcolm studied her for just a few seconds, second guessing his decision until he came to the conclusion she had to be told. “Your father is getting out of prison on Sunday,” Malcolm said quietly. “And there’s a story coming out in the papers on Monday about him stealing money from his work that even I can’t stop. And…” he faltered with the last piece of information he really did not want to relinquish.

“And?”

Malcolm took Ella’s hand. “And we found out he caused the car crash that killed your sister,” he said. “He knows we know all this. We can’t go the police because he has somebody ready to hurt your mum if we do. So we’re going to Scotland, out of his way, and we’ll make a plan up there, okay?”

Ella was the shade of white that one would expect of a corpse. Her mouth moved but nothing came out. This was exactly why Malcolm had not wanted to tell her anything at all.

He took the child’s face gently into his hands. “He will not hurt you,” he said. “I won’t allow it. I will _always_ stand between you and him.” Ella nodded, but the fear did not leave her face. “Now, I need you to do whatever I tell you to do while we’re away. No heroics, lass, I mean it. If I tell you to run, you fucking run, do you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“And if Mum, or Granny, or Bella, or Euan, or Aoife, if any of them tell you to run, you run.”

“No heroics,” she repeated faintly, with a vague nod of her head.

Malcolm smiled slightly at her. “That’s my girl.” He kissed her forehead and said, “C’mon, into the car with you.”

The journey was long, with stops at service stations for toilet breaks and bottles of water. By the time they got onto the A9 at Bridge of Allan, it was already half past seven at night. Bella had somehow managed to leave before them, and was about twenty minutes ahead of them. The children had fallen asleep in the back of the car. “You alright?” he asked Nicola quietly.

Her face told him she was anything but alright. “No, Malcolm,” she sighed. “No, I’m not fucking alright.”

“Good,” he said firmly. “If you were alright, I’d be turning off and taking you to the Murray Royal,” he added. She fixed him with a blank look. “It’s the crisis centre in Perth.”

Three quarters of an hour later, they were crossing the Dunkeld Bridge where, Malcolm recalled, Bella’s grandmother had very nearly died. He stopped where he spotted Bella standing on the street in front of an antiques shop with a tall, burly man in paint-stained jeans and a fleece – Patrick MacDonald. “Here we are,” he said to Nicola. He pulled the car over and got out. “Dad, this is Patrick,” Bella said.

Malcolm held out his hand, which Patrick shook firmly. “Have yous eaten?” was Patrick’s first question.

“Uh,” Malcolm said, taken aback by the question, “no. No, we just headed up the road.”

“Good,” Patrick grinned. “Tot’s got a boannie dose o’ soup on the bile.” Nicola was lifting the boot of the car open, but Patrick ran over to intervene. “I’ll get that,” he told her. “You just tak’ the kinchins up intae the kier.” Nicola frowned, and Patrick corrected himself, “You just get the bairns up to the flat.”

By the time Malcolm and Bella got up to the flat – which was more like the entire upper floor of that row of shops – there were a total of fourteen people up there: himself, his wife, his children and his mother-in-law; Bella, her husband, her kids and her au pair; and Patrick, Dannah and Tot.

Dannah was a lot like Bella in that she was utterly wild-looking in an unrestrained way. Her hair was short and messy, and she too was weather-beaten and freckly. Tot, on the other hand, looked like the most terrifying of headmistresses; she wore a navy-blue shirt tucked into a dark grey pleated skirt, her steely hair pinned up into a tight knot and her dark eyes surveying them as they sat on chairs, units and the floor with a meal of lentil soup and homemade bread. They were a quiet, introspective bunch that night. There was so much to process, and so much to fear, and yet they were sitting perfectly calmly eating soup. It was bizarre. By rights, this was a crisis, and crises were not solved with overcrowding and lentil soup. But it was safe. It _felt_ safe, and Malcolm couldn’t begin to understand why that was.

Bella stared into the fire lit in the hearth of Tot’s dark living room. Malcolm couldn’t understand how people could live in such darkness, without light from above. It was a sombre atmosphere, albeit it calmer than it should have been. There was an eeriness, a spookiness, about the place. “ _Friends, I have a sad story_ ,” Bella sang, her gaze not lifting from the flames. “ _A very sad story tae tell. I married a man fir he’s money, but he’s worse than the Devil himsel’_.”

Malcolm watched his daughter, the flames reflected in her bright eyes muted by the darkness of the room. “ _For when Mickey comes home I get battered; he batters me all black an’ blue; an’ if I say a word I get scattered; fae the kitchen right ben tae the room_.”

Nicola looked up from her feet. Bella, it turned out, could sing. Malcolm had never really heard her voice on its own, and was startled to find it haunting. “ _So I’ll go an’ I’ll get blue bleezin’ blind drunk; just tae gie Mickey a warnin’; an’ just fir spite I will stay out all night; and come rollin’ home drunk in the mornin’_.”

He was reminded of Bella’s grandmother who, when morose and particularly if she was sad about the son she lost in infancy, used to do the same thing – sit at the fire and sing alone. “ _Of whisky I ne’er was a lover; but what can a poor wummin do? I’ll go an’ I’ll drown all me sorrows; but I wish I could drown Mickey too_.”

Malcolm rested a hand on Nicola’s leg, for she appeared to be slightly unnerved by Bella’s choice of song. “ _All my friends and all my relations; they tell me I should leave home_.” Bella looked up from the fire and stared straight at Nicola, as if passing the fire onto her. “ _But as frightened as I am o’ Mickey, I’m mair frightened o’ bein’ alone_.” Nicola held the look between them, looking somewhat scared. Had Bella just exposed the reason Nicola had put up with James so long? “ _So I’ll go an’ I’ll get blue bleezin’ blind drunk; just tae gie Mickey a warnin’; an’ just fir spite I will stay out all night; and come rollin’ home drunk in the mornin’_.”

The room fell silent again, and the children went back to the old wooden ludo board Tot had given them to play with. Malcolm imagined Bella growing up like this – when she finally moved into a house, it would have been as dark and quiet as this, whether it was Charlie or Bernadette running it. How many nights had Bella spent staring into a fire? What was their aversion to light, particularly in times of darkness?

He had noticed that Bella was different up here than she was in London, or even Dundee. She was quieter, less brash, and more contemplative. Perhaps being back among her own people had that effect on her. Her father, Malcolm might be, but a Traveller, he was most definitely not. He couldn’t even begin to understand some of their ways, apart from perhaps their angry disposition, though, in fairness, they had plenty to be angry about if Bella’s description of her childhood was anything to go by. There was something serenely melancholy about them – a people who, in times of danger and fear, were perfectly content to sit in an unlit room and stare into a fire.

“ _When berry time comes roond each year, Blair’s population’s swellin’_ ,” Bella sang, her eyes once more fixed onto the fire. Eilidh looked up from her game and came to sit beside and sing with her mother. “ _There’s every kind o’ picker there, and every kind o’ dwellin’; there’s tents and huts and caravans, there’s bothies and there’s bivvies; there’s shelters made wi’ tattie bags and dug-oots made wi’ divvies_.”

Dannah and Tot joined in, and suddenly the voices ranged from the child’s to the elder’s. “ _There’s corner boys fae Glesga, kettle boilers fae Lochee; there’s miners fae the pits o’ Fife, mill-workers fae Dundee; there’s fisher-folk fae Peterheid and tramps fae everywhere; a’ lookin’ fir a livin’ aff the berry fields o’ Blair_.”

When Patrick and Euan’s voices joined the fray, Malcolm realised that they didn’t cope by staring into fire; they coped by what they did around that fire. “ _Noo, there’s Traivellers fae the Western Isles, fae Arran, Mull an’ Skye; fae Harris, Lewis an’ Kyles o’ Bute, they come their luck tae try; fae Inverness an’ Aiberdeen, fae Stornoway an’ Wick; a’ flock tae Blair at berry time, the straws and rasps tae pick_.”

Malcolm’s own children had stopped what they were doing, seemingly captivated by the fire and song around them. He felt Nicola lean into him; her body was more relaxed than it had been in weeks, and he knew she felt safer here than anywhere else. “ _Noo, there’s some wha make a pound or twa, some cannae earn their keep; an’ some wid pick fae morn tae nicht an’ some wid raither sleep; there’s some wha has tae pick or stairve, and some wha dinnae care; there’s some wha bless and some wha curse the berry fields o’ Blair_.”

Alasdair had crossed the room, and stood dangerously close to the fire. Out of instinct, Malcolm picked up his grandson and sat him on his lap. “ _Noo, there’s faimilies pickin’ fir wan purse an’ some wha pick alane; an’ there’s men wha share and share alike wi’ wives that’s nae their ain; there’s gladness an’ there’s sadness tae, there’s happy hairts an’ sair; there’s comedy an’ tragedy played on the field’s o’ Blair_.”

The child turned around and leaned exhausted into Malcolm’s chest; he had to think the singing was acting as a lullaby to a young boy who’d spent all day travelling. “ _But afore I put my pen awa’, it’s this I’d like tae say; you’ll traivel far afore you’ll meet a kinder lot than they; fir I’ve mixed wi’ them in field an’ pub an’ while I’ve breath tae spare; I’ll bless the hand that led me tae the berry fields o’ Blair_.”

The quiet descended once more, leaving Malcolm to try and understand an entire way of living. After all, this _was_ how these people lived. It was how the survived, whether under a solid roof or the bow of a tent. There was little sense to it in his mind. The sullen atmosphere ought to set the teeth on edge, but it did the opposite. It calmed the nerves. It was the lack of a front – the knowledge that everyone in this room was either scared, exhausted or confused, or some combination of the three. Nobody was trying to convince anyone else they were fine. Where there was nothing to be said, Bella sang, as Travellers did.

It was gone eleven when Patrick and Dannah said they should get back to the camp. Bella instantly got up to follow them with her children, and Aoife got up too. Bella said to her, “We don’t expect you to camp out with us. You can stay up here if you want.”

“No,” Aoife said firmly. “No, I’m sticking with you guys.”

Bella shrugged and let the young woman follow her. Victoria took Ella, Sophie and Ben and retired to the rooms Tot had shown them to earlier, and Malcolm guided Nicola through to the bedroom they’d been given. He was waiting for the breakdown over the information he had rather cruelly flung in her face before they left, but it never came. She didn’t say a word. And that was worse than any other reaction she could have taken. It had destroyed any progress she might have made, and Malcolm knew he should not have told her like that. It was his fault his wife was now motionless, staring through the dark as they braced for Sunday to come.


	20. Up the A9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's leaving for Aberdeen in two hours? And guess who's not slept yet? Yay.

Light flooded the room. Malcolm forced his eyes open to find Tot placing a cup of tea on his bedside table, before walking around the bed to do the same on Nicola’s side. “What time is it?” he asked groggily. He was still very much asleep.

“Half seven,” Tot said. Fucking hell, the woman was even more austere in the cold Perthshire sunlight blazing through the window. Well into her seventies, she had the air of a woman who had retained her youth purely so she could give bollockings. “’Mon. Up wi’ ye. Ye’ll fin’ nae holiday camp roond here, boy.”

Nicola stirred sleepily and moaned, “Bloody hell, it’s like Catterick in this place.”

Tot glowered down at her. “Ye’ve got wan mair day o’ freedom afore thon coichy scaldie cowie’s in a motor lookin’ fir ye, and ye want tae waste it under a duvet?! Up!” she shouted.

“Except a Sergeant Major might be marginally less terrifying,” Nicola mumbled into Malcolm’s arm. He fought down a chuckle, but could not prevent a smile from touching his lips.

“Whit wis that, lass?” Tot demanded.

“Nothing,” Nicola replied quickly. She was like a schoolgirl, the way she immediately denied any wrongdoing without even thinking about whether or not she would be believed.

Tot raised an eyebrow. For a moment, Malcolm thought Tot might retaliate, but she did not. A smile broke across her face as she bent over slightly; before anyone could stop her, she had yanked the duvet off of them right down to the end of the bed, leaving them exposed – Malcolm in his boxers and Nicola in a nightdress. “Fuck’s sake, woman!” Malcolm yelled in surprise. “Are you fucking mental?!”

“Fuckin’ certifiable,” Tot smirked as she tied the curtains back. “Did Bella nae warn ye?”

“Did she fuck,” grumbled Malcolm. He remembered the few words he had heard from Tot over the phone, and the thought that he never, ever wanted to meet the woman. This world was fucking cruel.

Tot strode away, but stopped at the door to tell them, “Yer breakfast’s cookin’. Should be aboot ten minutes.”

She left them dazed, still half-asleep, and trying to work out what the fucking hell was wrong with that woman. Malcolm got out of bed, got himself dressed, washed and shaved. When he returned to the bedroom, Nicola was up, dressed and washed, too, but was sitting on the bed with her eyes fixed to the wall. He didn’t really know what she was thinking, but he did know she wouldn’t tell him when asked. She broke her stare when she realised he was standing beside her, and looked up at him with a tiny smile. “I think I’ve finally met someone who’s fucking scarier than you, Jamie and Bella.”

“Nobody’s scarier than me,” he assured her.

“ _She_ fucking is.”

When they left the flat with Victoria and the children, Malcolm noticed how quiet the street was. All the shops and cafes were still closed, it being quarter past eight in the morning. The only cars parked on the street were his, Euan’s, a wee red Corsa, and a dark blue Volkswagen Passat. The air was cold and damp as they headed in the direction Tot had sent them for Patrick and Dannah’s camp. Though Malcolm had seen these camps for himself, he briefly found himself hoping Nicola and Victoria would be able to repress their thoroughly middle-class reactions to the rudimentary nature of what they were about to see.

That, it turned out, was a hope too far.

As they stepped into the clearing, Dannah shouted, “Aye, come in aboot, lads!”

A burn ran through the camp, where Eilidh sat washing her face and Euan scooped up water into an old copper kettle. There were three tents set up, one larger than the others, constructed with bending birch and hazel bows and dark canvases. Bella sat on an overturned gas bottle, fighting Alasdair into clothes. Aoife sat cross-legged in the mouth of a tent, brushing her wet hair. Patrick and Dannah were cooking sausages on a metal tray hanging over – almost into – the fire.

Ella, Ben and Sophie immediately ran to the water to see Eilidh; they hadn’t yet been conditioned to find this way of living shocking, and Malcolm decided at that moment that he would never allow them to be. Nicola, however, stood with her mouth half-open, while Victoria said, “I didn’t expect it to be…well, for it to work so well. I thought it would look _unhappy_.”

And for all this may have looked like it should have been an unhappy dwelling, Malcolm knew better than to ever think it was. He had seen it for himself.

“Us, unhappy?” Bella grinned up at Victoria, finally pulling a jumper over her son’s head. “Nah. I miss this. Might even jack in the job and go back to it.”

Malcolm glared at her. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Bella smirked. “As if I would leave you alone in the nut-hoose, Dad,” she laughed.

Patrick picked up the sausages from the tray and placed them one by one onto a large serving plate, which he put down onto a square sheet of canvas laid across the leaf strewn ground. “Breakfast, kinchins!” he shouted. “But it’s het, sae mind yersels! An’ leave enough fir us!”

All the children, including his own, ran over to him as Euan hooked the kettle over the fire. “Hey! You’ve just eaten!” Nicola shouted at her children. But they were already on their knees at the plate, helping themselves.

“Ach, leave them,” Dannah laughed. Despite her untamed appearance, she came across as inherently kind, relaxed and outgoing. “It’ll nae hurt them.”

Nicola frowned, but relented. She joined Bella on the gas bottle, and Malcolm and Victoria sat with Patrick on row of potato crates.

It wasn’t long before they sat with cups of tea that tasted faintly of campfire smoke, and Bella told them what they were going to be doing. “There’s a lassie and her man up in the Highlands,” she said, “that I worked with for a while. Stayed good mates with them. Anyway, they’re the caretakers of a castle up there, and it’s empty just now. You guys can go there. We’ll take Victoria up to Skye. I reckon James would target Victoria if we keep her with Nicola. He’d be banking on how much Nicola loves both you and Victoria – it’s probably best he can only get at one or the other.”

“James might know your address,” Malcolm reminded her.

“That’s why, if Victoria doesn’t mind, we’ll pitch up at Skeabost or Scorrybreac,” Bella said. “He’ll struggle tae find us if we go away up the back of Portree.” Victoria nodded her head in agreement; Malcolm had not expected her to resist any plan of action, and she clearly trusted Bella’s instincts. “Euan’s got a hotel at Borve, but again, James might know about it, so we can’t stay there. We can eat there, though.”

An interruption came in the form of an argument between Eilidh and Alasdair; none of the adults had been aware of the rising tensions until Eilidh shouted, “Ha ma chate, buck!”

Though Malcolm did not know what that meant, Bella was furious with her and shouted her over. “He’s nae mair a buck than you, Eilidh Whyte, an’ he’ll nae be ha’in’ nae chate. Nash avree an’ halt the scaldified cairry oan!” she admonished her daughter, who went back to her brother and apologised. Patrick was going red in the face trying not to laugh. “Nix mang!” she protested. “It’s no’ funny!”

“It’s fuckin’ hilarious,” Patrick chortled. “Where’d she pick thon yin up fae, eh? Yersel’ or Euan?”

Bella glared at Euan, who said fairly, “Probably me. I telt Gordon tae dae the same thing at Christmas.” Patrick was bent forwards laughing and, though not all of them really knew what Eilidh had said, the laughter infected the whole camp like fucking TB. Whatever it was, Bella’s outrage that Eilidh had picked it up from Euan’s frustration with Gordon had set Patrick and Dannah into hysterics, and that spread through everyone else with absolutely no effort on their part. The adults sat there laughing for a good few minutes, each one spurred on by another’s failed attempts to stop. It was the highest Malcolm had felt in a while, and probably higher than he would feel for a long time coming. Even Nicola was laughing uncontrollably into Bella’s shoulder.

They stayed there until nearly midday, drinking tea and eating biscuits while the children played in the burn. When they eventually parted, Bella gave Malcolm a sheet of paper with directions and a gate code, and the names of the people they were to meet at the gate house of this Highland estate – Aneta and Cezary. According to Bella, they were Polish and spoke better English than she did. “Oh, and stop at Pitlochry for messages,” she added. “You’ll not want tae drive ten miles to the nearest village for a loaf of bread once you’re up there.”

The drive up the A9 was horrendous. It was a busy Saturday, with far too many people going northbound for Malcolm’s liking. What should have taken them about twenty minutes – the stretch of A9 between Dunkeld and Pitlochry – took them nearly forty minutes, thanks to idiots crawling along the dual carriageway, and lorries that gained speed every time he attempted to overtake. The respite they had at Pitlochry was the only hope left for his patience, dashed entirely by the tiny supermarket car park and the hoards of tourists who shouldn’t have been allowed to fucking drive. Of all the things that could have broken his resolve, he had not thought it would be the driving.

He leaned against the bonnet of the car in the Co-Op car park, looking around him as he drank from a bottle of Fanta. In the distance, in one of the car parks on the other end of that street, he spotted a dark car, much like the one he had seen in Dunkeld. He briefly considered the possibility that they were being followed, but reminded himself that he would have noticed someone tailing him, the pathetic speed at which he had gone up the A9. Plus there had to have been about twenty cars that colour between here and the high street alone.

Nicola’s hand fell onto his back. “I can drive the rest of the way, love,” she said to him. “It’s making you anxious, all that fucking about on the dual carriageway.”

Malcolm looked down at her. How was it that Nicola could barely see a political fucking disaster charging towards her, but had twenty-twenty vision when it came to him and what went on in his mind? “I’ll be fine,” he replied.

“No, you won’t,” Nicola asserted. “You’re about two slow lorries and one uncertain tourist away from a panic attack. There’s no shame in it, you know,” she reminded him gently. “You’re under incredible strain; something had to get to you in the end.” She took the keys gently from his hand and kissed his cheek. “Please remember you can still be human, Malcolm. Nobody fucking expects you to be Superman.”

It turned out his wife was right to insist that she drive. By the time Nicola turned off the A9 at Dalwhinnie, Malcolm was losing his patience for everything around him. It was a battle not to turn around and tell the kids to shut the fuck up, when they were having perfectly civilised conversations. They were on their best behaviour; Malcolm had to believe they sensed how uptight their parents were and so were doing all they could to keep out of trouble. The fact that even their voices were piercing through his head like a hot poker was not their fault. They were just kids, after all.

The scenery grew steadily wilder as they took the Dalwhinnie road, which had more bends about it than the fucking Prime Minister’s career. Malcolm never was one for car sickness, but this was something else entirely. He couldn’t even blame Nicola’s driving, for he could honestly say it wouldn’t have been any better with him behind the wheel.

Along the Laggan to Spean Bridge road, they pulled over at a gate house on the banks of a river, tall and imposing, with a turret on its front and a low wall around it. Malcolm wondered how many times it had been flooded, because it seemed to sit dangerously low into the river bank. Nicola opened the window, and a blonde woman in her late twenties bent over to talk to them. “You must be Nicola and Malcolm?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Nicola said. “Bella, my stepdaughter, she said you’d be taking us to a castle?”

“Yes,” the woman smiled. “We have made up some of the rooms for you and your children. You may stay as long as you need to – it will be empty until the end of May.” Bella had been right; though she had a strong accent, this woman’s English was impeccable. “I’m Aneta, by the way. That’s my husband, Cezary,” she added, pointing towards a red pick up truck, where a skinny man sat in the driver’s seat. He smiled and waved out the window at them. “It’s about two and a half, maybe three miles, to the castle. The barrier code is twenty thirty. If you just follow us, we’ll take you there.”

Malcolm sat quietly as Nicola drove over the wooden bridge that crossed the river, and through the barrier. They passed what appeared to be a beach before travelling through thick forest; the only thing between the car and the loch were trees. There was no barrier along the steep bank of the loch, and nothing to stop a car tumbling into the depths of that loch.

It was a single-track road, though it was tarred until the cattle grid, after which it was dusty and littered with large stones that made up the fabric of the ground. It was bumpy as fuck, with potholes in the most unavoidable places. They turned right, following Cezary down to a courtyard, where they finally stopped.

Aneta guided them into the building while Cezary trailed behind, carrying the bulk of the children’s belongings. Up the stairs and along the corridor, they found themselves in a large Victorian drawing room, off which a wide staircase lined with very old portraits of what were likely very important people led them to the next floor. Everything was enclosed with walls of dark wood, probably mahogany, and stags’ heads; the ground floor was not so much carpeted as tiled with expensive Victorian rugs in warm reds, browns and golds, in varying patterns. Upstairs, three bedrooms had been set aside, one for Malcolm and Nicola, one for Ella and Sophie, and one for Ben, with a bathroom at the end of the corridor; none of it seemed to have changed since the nineteenth century.

Aneta, who was carrying the groceries, said, “I will just take you down to the kitchen.”

The kitchen was two floors below, down the stairs they’d only just ascended and another staircase that was made entirely of stone. It took them to a large room with a rather battered looking table at its centre. There was an old-fashioned Rayburn along the back wall, with worktops and cupboards along the others. There was a white fridge in the corner that stood out like a limp cock at an orgy. “We have started the Rayburn for you,” Cezary said while Aneta and Nicola put away groceries. “There’s enough wood and coal there for a few days. Keep it lit. It is keeping the heating and hot water going in this wing of the house, and it’ll be your cooker. You should find everything you need, but if you need anything, we are in the flat at the door you came inside from.”

“Thanks,” Malcolm said. He shook Cezary’s hand, and then Aneta’s.

When they left, Malcolm, Nicola, Ella, Sophie and Ben stood in a kitchen that was probably bigger than their own kitchen, living room and dining room combined, each one looking around them. “Fucking hell, we could’ve just shoved a couple of beds in here,” Malcolm said, drinking in the sheer size of what was only a bloody kitchen. For the first time since leaving England, they were alone. And as Malcolm’s voice bounced off the rugged stone walls, it was the first time he felt it, too.


	21. Camans

Malcolm opened his eyes.

In the darkness, he could smell blood. He was unsure as to whom it belonged, or if it came from one person or more.

Beyond the intense ringing in his ears, he could hear the wail of police sirens. The screams of a child. His child.

“ _Help_!” she screamed. “Dad! HELP!”

Ella. Fuck. Ella. Small feet passed his face as he lay on the ground, and Malcolm realised with a surge of panic that Sophie was going to her big sister’s aid.

“Sophie, no!” Malcolm roared. He scrambled to his feet, and immediately regretted it. Agony pulsed through his leg, and it shook underneath him. He closed his eyes. Pain was just a sensation. He didn’t have to think of it as unbearable or even unpleasant; it was just a feeling. It passed. It always passed. However, the screams of his daughter did not pass; they kept coming. Where Sophie shone the torch, Malcolm saw Ella in the loch with her arms around her silent mother, struggling to keep both their heads above water. “Sophie!” Malcolm bellowed at his youngest daughter, who was getting ready to step over the edge of the bank. “Sophie, get back from there! Go and make sure your brother’s okay!”

He couldn’t see Ben, and he needed to know where the boy was, and if he was injured. The fact Ben hadn’t called for his parents terrified Malcolm. It always was the instinct of the youngest child to run for his mum and dad; his silence was almost intolerable.

Every step he took caused immense pain, with which he only coped by rationalising it as his body’s mechanics at work. If he was so heinously injured, his body would not allow him to stand. And even if he was operating purely on adrenaline, that adrenaline was going to be what saved him. It had to be.

Blue light broke through the trees as the sirens grew closer. Malcolm pulled Sophie away from the bank of Loch an Righ, and jumped into to freezing water. With Sophie’s torchlight, he swam to his wife and daughter, surprised by the cooperation of his own leg. Perhaps the sheer temperature of the Highland water was numbing the pain. “I’ve got her,” he panted to Ella as he put his arms around Nicola. “Can you swim back?”

“Yeah,” Ella gasped out. “Yeah.” She was blatantly physically exhausted, but if Ella Murray said she could do a thing, then she could do it.

Nicola’s body was a dead weight, and it was hard labour keeping her above the surface of the black water. He clumsily threw her out of the loch and onto the dirt road that ran parallel with the bank. When he got the chance to check, he was horrified to find she was not breathing.

He started to administer what he knew of resuscitation. “C’mon, Nic’la,” he breathed while he pressed up and down onto her chest. “Just breathe. Fucking breathe, you idiotic woman!”

* * *

 

** Sunday, 2pm: **

As Malcolm drove back from the village, he passed the entrance to the mountain bike trails, his attention caught by a dark blue Passat. He wasn’t imagining it. It was definitely the same car he had seen in Dunkeld yesterday morning. He was sure of it. He did not stop; he calmed himself with the reminder there was no way onto that estate in a car without having to go through a coded barrier. Even if they did know where Nicola was hiding, they would have to find her on foot. There were three miles behind the barrier. It would take them over an hour to get to that castle on foot, with the incline and the need to stop for passing vehicles.

Nevertheless, when he got back to the castle and dropped the bag of potatoes for which he’d been sent out onto the old table, he said quietly to Nicola, “Someone’s following us.” He said it now rather than waiting because the children were upstairs exploring the castle, and he did not want them, particularly Ella, to hear that.

“What?” she replied. He heard the panic in her voice.

“There’s a car I saw in Dunkeld parked down at the fucking bike trails,” he sighed.

Nicola took a breath and turned back to the carrots she had been chopping. She had been forcing herself to stay calm all day; Malcolm had watched her physical efforts in awe as, somehow, she managed it. He had never known her with such control over her anxieties. It worried him more than it comforted him, because it meant something in her had changed.

But he didn’t confront it. Malcolm guessed that it was a combination of the truth of what happened to Katie, the fear of James finding them, and the unfamiliar surroundings that caused her to turn her panic inwards rather than out at the rest of the world. They ate dinner in silence, broken only by the children excitedly telling them about the pieces of history they’d uncovered in the rooms of this castle. Ben had picked up a long stick, curved at the bottom, which he passed to Malcolm across the table as they ate. “There’s a load of these at the front door. I keep telling Ella it’s a hockey stick but she say’s it’s not,” he said.

“It can’t be a hockey stick, numb-nuts,” Ella quipped. Nicola glared at her daughter for the insult, but Ella didn’t appear to care. It was another one picked up from Euan, Malcolm was sure. “Hockey sticks are round on one side and flat on the other. That’s like a triangle at the end.”

“It’s a caman,” Malcolm settled their argument for them, placing it in the centre of the table as he picked up a forkful of shepherd’s pie. “Shinty stick.”

“Shinty?” Sophie asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “I learnt to play on Skye. It’s a game they play in the north of Scotland. It’s a bit like hockey, I suppose, except it’s a given you’re probably gonna get the shit beat into you.”

If he had told them he didn’t know what it was, he wouldn’t have ended up on the triangular green out the front of the castle that night, teaching three children to play shinty. He put Nicola in goal, knowing she was still not fit for diving into a mess of camans to retrieve a ball. The children picked it up quickly, though Ella had to force herself not to hold the caman like a hockey stick, and still forgot she could swing it back over her head.

Ben was ruthless. Malcolm was sure his ankles would be black and blue from Ben’s fearless attacks, for the boy had no problem with ‘accidentally’ hitting his dad’s ankles instead of the ball. Sophie was more timid, but still managed to almost break Malcolm’s kneecaps, albeit accidentally – a genuine accident, not her brother’s idea of an accident.

Aneta and Cezary were watching from the door of the castle. The kids invited them to play but they had enough experience of the clash of ash against leg to politely decline. As the sky darkened and they could no longer see the ball, Malcolm decided to call it a night. The kids ran straight to the library; for some reason, they were all fascinated by the Victorian children’s books, and Ella enjoyed looking through the account books from fucking 1878.

Once he settled them in the library, knowing they would not be able to go to bed and sleep while still so wired from sport and bizarre surroundings, he went to find Nicola. At about ten o’clock, he eventually found her on the balcony, where she was staring into the forest that stretched for miles out from the castle. “Nicola?” he asked cautiously. Recent past experience had taught him not to trust his wife leaning on the parapet of a fourth-floor balcony. “You okay?”

She turned to face him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “How did my life get to this fucking point, Malcolm?” she asked, wiping the tears from her face.

“The fact your ex-husband is a violent, money-laundering, murderous piece of shit doesn’t help matters,” he reminded her.

Nicola scowled at him, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. “I just don’t get why he’d kill Katie,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I don’t think it was Katie he was trying to kill,” Malcolm replied honestly. “I think it was Molly he was after. I even reckon he did his best to keep Katie out of that car.”

“And then I went and put her in it,” Nicola said. There it was. There was the guilt he had been waiting for. Indeed, he feared he might have fuelled it. “I let her go after James grounded her. He was being so harsh – he’d already confiscated her phone and computer and he banned her from going to Poland. She was miserable, and she complained endlessly. So I let her go and told her not to tell her father.”

He approached her carefully. “You weren’t to know what was going to happen to that car,” he said. “The blame here lies with the man who fucking sabotaged the car, not the woman who gave a wee bit of fucking freedom to a daughter her husband was fucking abusing.”

“It wasn’t ab-”

“It fucking was!” Malcolm cut her off. “He deprived her of her freedom for his own fucking gain. _That_ is fucking abuse.”

He had been too harsh. He knew that the moment he looked into her eyes. Something there broke. _She_ broke. She had stopped crying, but covered her face with her hands, like she couldn’t let him see what was really there. The only thing he could do was hold her until she calmed down a bit. They stood there on that balcony in the cold air, their only source of light coming from within the castle, through the open door to the balcony.

How long they stood there, Malcolm couldn’t say. They stayed there, holding onto one another, until the light cut out.

His first thought was the children, and so he used the screen of his phone to give them enough light to prevent them from falling down the stairs as they ran to the library on the ground floor. When they got there, Aneta was already lighting candles, a radio hooked onto the belt of her jeans. “This happens sometimes,” she smiled. “The electricity comes from a hydro-generator. Occasionally it will break down. Cezary has gone to fix it.”

Relieved, Malcolm sat down on one of the chairs and watched the flames flicker, until Cezary’s voice came across the radio. “Has anyone seen any people near the turbine house? It looks like someone has deliberately blocked the intake.”

There was a flurry of people answering with, “No,” which was interrupted by the voice of a young man.

“Kyle here,” he said. “Just checking nobody’s taken any guns out the gamekeeper’s shed and forgot to sign them out?” Again, various voices told Kyle they had not taken any guns. “There’s two miss-” he began, but stopped short. “Shit! The lock on the shed’s broken. Cezary, mate, call the police.”

Aneta picked up her radio from her jeans. “Aneta here. Cezary is down at the turbine house. I will call the police for you.” A door slammed. From the direction of the noise, it had to be the back entrance, via Aneta and Cezary’s flat. “Cezary, are you still at the turbine house?”

“Yes,” he replied over the radio. “Trying to unblock this bloody intake!”

Nicola jumped to her feet. “He’s here. This is him. This is what he does. He fucking traps you.”

Malcolm stood, too, and said to the children, “Go and get your coats. We’re going for a walk.” They obeyed without argument. “We can’t stay here,” he said to the women. “We can’t stay here and just fucking wait for him to find us.”

“Loch an Righ,” Aneta said. “Head up to Loch an Righ. Across the lawn, up the hill, turn right. If you get there, keep walking that road to Lochan na h-Earbha. The police should find him before he finds you.”

At the door with the kids, Malcolm spotted the camans. He’d rather his children were armed, in some way or another. “Here, take these,” he said, handing them one each. “Don’t ask why. Just take them.” Aneta gave him and Nicola heavy duty torches and sent them on their way with the reassurance she would send the police after them if she could.

They set off up the road, the children always in front where Nicola and Malcolm could see them. “He must’ve driven here straight from the fucking prison,” Nicola said, her tone furious. “How the fuck did he know we’re _here_ , of all the places in fucking Britain and Ireland?”

That, Malcolm realised, was a good question. That blue car had followed them as far as Strathmashie, but how could they have known exactly where they were? But then, how had anyone managed to follow him as he drove through London the day someone had managed to photograph them in that café? And how had they known the house was empty the day it was broken into? They had to have some means of knowing his movements.

But that didn’t matter now, for they were walking, and there was no way to track them without actually seeing them, or at least hearing them. Or, at least, that was what Malcolm dared to hope. He linked his arm with Nicola’s, conscious that she was still not fully recovered and was prone to tire very quickly. This hill was steep, and the road bumpy. The moon above was obscured by dangerously dark clouds, the stars nowhere to be found.

Nicola looked back over her shoulder, but Malcolm stopped her. “Don’t look back. You’ll just start imagining things that aren’t fucking there. You watch the kids. I’ll watch our backs.”


	22. Loch an Righ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written this on three days of zero sleep, no food and a depressive episode. I apologise in advance.

The trees were a cage, the row on the left the bars between the dirt track and the north bank of Loch an Righ. From what Malcolm could see in the blueish light of his torch, it was not at all a large body of water, but it seemed deep; he reckoned that loch had to be bitterly cold. The children walked ahead, with Nicola reminding them every couple of minutes that they had to be quiet. Ella understood, but Ben and Sophie didn’t know enough to understand that their messing about would put them in peril. How could they, when their parents hadn’t told them the whole truth for fear of putting them into an uncontrollable panic?

“Ben, Sophie!” Nicola hissed. “Quiet!”

They ceased their bickering. Malcolm checked behind for anybody following, but there was nobody. It made him uneasy; surely there would have been some sign of someone at their backs by now? They’d been walking close to an hour, and they’d been far from silent. Their footfalls echoed and the children didn’t stay quiet for more than a few minutes at a time, and Malcolm had to keep reminding Ben not to let his caman trail the ground, for the grinding of ash on stone would surely attract trouble.

Nicola was hanging on to Malcolm’s arm, and with every minute she walked uphill in this cold night air, she lost more and more energy. He knew she wouldn’t be able to walk as far as Lochan na h-Earbha without stopping. He wanted to move faster, but knew that with three children and a semi-injured wife in tow, that wasn’t about to happen. There was no point in exhausting her – if, God fucking forbid, Nicola ended up in a confrontation, he could not let her be in that situation with absolutely no energy left to her.

There was a corner at the top of this road, which Malcolm presumed took them around the west bank. But there was also a clearing in the trees straight ahead, secluded and pitch black; they could stop there for a few minutes and discuss what they were going to do. “Malcolm,” Nicola whispered. “I’m sure there’s another road the leads up here.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just…if Aneta sent us this way, she sent us knowing we’d end up coming full circle.”

Malcolm knew what she was getting at; there was nothing to say they wouldn’t meet James on the road, whether either one of them had the first clue where they were going or not. “Come in here,” he said quietly, leading them into the clearing. If not for the light of the torch, Malcolm felt sure the darkness would have enveloped them, smothering them like a toxic gas.

“No, we’ve got to keep going,” Nicola protested.

“You’ve got to rest for a few minutes, Nic’la, ‘cause I can’t carry you up that fucking hill!” he retorted. He dragged her into the clearing, behind the nearest trees. Ella pulled her brother and sister in until they were all hidden in the trees. “You okay?” he asked them.

“I’m cold, Dad,” moaned Ben. It was a perfectly fair complaint for a child; up here, March nights were all too often sub-zero in temperature, with the probability of rain, sleet, snow, ice…or a disgusting combination of the four. Holding onto the caman with bare hands probably wasn’t making Ben feel any warmer, either. “It’s freezing!”

“I know, Ben,” Malcolm sighed. “Once we get moving again you might warm up.”

Headlights swung around the slight bend in the road they had not yet walked; Malcolm pushed Nicola and his children back further into the forest and switched off the torch, while trying to see through the trees onto the road. With the light of its own headlamps, Malcolm identified it as Cezary’s red pick up truck. Except it wasn’t Cezary in the front cab. In the passenger seat was a man Malcolm did not recognise, but in the driver’s seat sat James Murray. “Shush!” Malcolm hissed at Sophie, who was complaining she had scraped her hand on the bark of a tree.

The girl fell silent, leaving a stillness broken only by the rattling of the truck’s engine and the thunder tyres against dirt and stone. To Malcolm’s horror, the truck reversed into the clearing. Ella quickly put her hand over her mother’s mouth to stifle the noise of panic that they all knew was about to escape her. The only saving grace was that they had gathered to the side of the clearing not currently lit by the cold light of the headlights, and that they had been here when they crossed James’ path, and not exposed on the road down which they’d just driven.

Two men jumped out of the truck, clearly arguing about something. “I don’t fucking know, Robert!” James snapped. “I can’t even say the bloody name of the loch, never mind find it.” He carried a shotgun as he paced the clearing; from what Malcolm could see of his face, James was frustrated and out to end this, one way or another. Robert – Robert Armitage, Malcolm assumed – leant against the back of the trailer. He too carried a shotgun, and looked terrifyingly at ease with it in his hands; Malcolm put that down to sheer cockiness, doubting the man had ever fired a shotgun in his life.

Malcolm’s heart was in serious fucking danger of breaking his ribs. So conscious was he that every breath he took made even the tiniest sound, he found himself holding his breath for indecent lengths of time. He was now horribly aware that he was completely unarmed – unlike James Murray, he had not thought to break into the gamekeeper’s sheds and help himself to the weaponry. It was more difficult than he’d realised, to stand frozen when every fibre of his being screamed at him to move. When he looked around, the darkness was such that he could only make out the shadows of his family’s faces, but what he could see mirrored his own paralysing fear. They, like him, had never been on the barrel-end of a shotgun.

“Trust Malcolm Tucker to lead us somewhere like this,” Robert spat. “There must be a dozen different roads they could’ve taken.”

“This isn’t Tucker,” James said. “This has his fucking dirty gypsy daughter written all over it. Only a pikey chooses to run to the arse end of nowhere. Anybody fucking normal would hide in a fucking normal place.” Malcolm’s fingers tightened around the handle of the torch. It was Ella’s hand that touched his arm, reminding him that he could not react to what James had said. “I’m not even going to try and find her. They’ll be up some fucking godforsaken hill on the Isle of Skye.”

“What do you want to do?” Robert asked. “The police will be arriving by now. The gamekeeper told the Polish girl to call them.”

“We should’ve done more than steal the engineer’s truck,” James replied. “It would have kept the cops occupied.”

“What, you want to go back down and-”

“Don’t be fucking stupid, man!” shouted James. His temper had flared. That was never a good sign. “They’ve got to be nearby. And I’m not leaving here until I’ve dealt with them. I’m going back to fucking jail anyway, thanks to Tucker and his nosey bloody journalists. Might as well go back for something worthwhile.”

One of the children – Malcolm thought it was Sophie – stumbled forwards a step. The crunch of shoes on fallen twigs and needles echoed in the stagnant air, the caman falling onto the ground with a thump. Malcolm caught her and tried to steady her, wincing with every noise they made. He released her, hoping they would make less noise apart. Footsteps drew closer, and with no light, Malcolm struggled to gauge just how close they were.

A scream pierced the air.

Sophie was hauled out of the trees by a pair of hands through the dark. Malcolm tried to grab her but it was too late; she was out into the clearing with James and Robert. All he could do was switch on the torch and follow her into the open. “You fucking hurt her,” Malcolm snarled at James, who still held Sophie by a handful of her coat, “and I will batter you so many different shades of fucking black and blue, you’ll look like a fucking Dulux paint chart.”

Robert pointed his shotgun at Malcolm. “Is this Tucker?” he asked of James.

“Oh, yes,” James answered, his smile more a sneer than anything else. “Malcolm Tucker, the Demon Spin Doctor of Downing Street.”

“Out here where I can see you,” Robert ordered Malcolm. He pushed down his own belligerence and obeyed, to protect Sophie. “You’re a very problematic man, Mr. Tucker.”

“So I’ve been told,” Malcolm retorted. “But if I’m problematic to scum like you and fucking John Wayne over there, it means I’m on the right side of morality.”

James pressed the shotgun into Sophie’s back. “No!” Nicola screamed from behind them. And just like that, Nicola, Ella and Ben were at his side, too brave and too idiotic to remain hidden. Ben and Ella, at least, still held camans in their hands. “No, James! Shoot me if you want, but do _not_ fucking hurt the kids!” James lifted the gun, pointing it at Nicola now. He advanced towards her; she raised her hands, and backed away out of the clearing, as always was he subconscious compulsion to remove herself from dark, enclosed spaces. “You’ve already killed one of your children over this, James,” Nicola dared remind him. “Please, don’t harm any of the others.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, you mental case?” James snarled. The defensive tone said it all.

“I know,” Nicola told him frantically. “I know you sabotaged Molly’s car. That’s why you blame me for what happened to Katie. You set that car up to crash and I let her go out that day.”

James cocked the shotgun, Nicola staring straight down the barrel. “No! Mum!” yelled Ben. Caman in hand, he tried to run to his mother. Robert swung his shotgun by its barrel, the stock smashing into Ben’s head. He tumbled to the ground. Malcolm dived towards him on sheer instinct. The boy was unconscious, knocked out by the blow to the head. He was breathing, but other than that, Malcolm could not know what damage had been done. He pulled off his sweater and rolled it up under his son’s head, and placed him into the recovery position.

“Ella, no!” shouted Nicola. “Get back!”

But when Malcolm looked around, Ella was trying, for all the size of her, to wrestle the shotgun from James’ grip. Nicola flung herself forwards, trying to break up her daughter and her ex-husband. The barrel of the gun moved wildly through the air as each grip on it changed. Robert stepped towards the fray, but Malcolm jumped to his feet and stood between Robert and his family. “Think about this,” warned Malcolm. “Right now, you’re doing time for financial crimes and GBH. Do you want to add murder to that? Do you know what happens in jail to men who fucking murder kids?”

“James is right. If we’re going to jail, we might as well tie up all the loose ends.”

“And that’s worth life in prison, is it?” Malcolm challenged him. Behind Robert, Sophie quietly picked up Ben’s caman. “That’s worth the brutality of life watching your back for the next psycho inmate with enough fucking human decency to despise you for killing a fucking child? Jesus fucking Christ, you’ve actually got less sense than I thought.”

Robert cocked his gun, ready to try and shoot around Malcolm. Surely Robert knew there was a high likelihood he might hit James rather than Nicola or Ella? Or was he a better shot than Malcolm was willing to credit him with? He was distracted by the tangled shouts at his back, of James telling Ella to let go, of Nicola telling Ella to run, and of Ella directly disobeying the one order Malcolm had given her – to run when she was told to. He should have known his daughter had too much loyalty and courage for that.

The blast that seemed to break the world down the middle did not come from Robert’s gun. Malcolm’s whole body wanted to turn and see what had happened, but he didn’t dare turn his back on Robert. There was the splash of water; all he could say with certainty was at least one of the three had ended up in the frozen waters of Loch an Righ. Whatever happened shocked Robert, because his arms relaxed the height at which he directed the shotgun. Sophie took that opportunity – when Malcolm gave a curt nod of encouragement, the permission to use violence, she swung the caman back and clattered it across the back of Robert’s head.

As Robert fell, his finger squeezed the trigger. The sound of the discharging shotgun preceded the excruciating pain in Malcolm’s leg by milliseconds that, somehow, he was able to count. His leg gave way, and he lost his equilibrium. A sharp pain shot through his head as it hit the corner of the truck’s bed, and Malcolm Tucker hit the ground, his vision as black as the water mere yards away.


	23. Raigmore Hospital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter of this one. I may well explore the impact - particularly on Malcolm, Nicola and Ella - in a separate fic.

Malcolm opened his eyes.

In the darkness, he could smell blood. He was unsure as to whom it belonged, or if it came from one person or more.

Beyond the intense ringing in his ears, he could hear the wail of police sirens. The screams of a child. His child.

“ _Help_!” she screamed. “Dad! HELP!”

Ella. Fuck. Ella. Small feet passed his face as he lay on the ground, and Malcolm realised with a surge of panic that Sophie was going to her big sister’s aid.

“Sophie, no!” Malcolm roared. He scrambled to his feet, and immediately regretted it. Agony pulsed through his leg, and it shook underneath him. He closed his eyes. Pain was just a sensation. He didn’t have to think of it as unbearable or even unpleasant; it was just a feeling. It passed. It always passed. However, the screams of his daughter did not pass; they kept coming. Where Sophie shone the torch, Malcolm saw Ella in the loch with her arms around her silent mother, struggling to keep both their heads above water. “Sophie!” Malcolm bellowed at his youngest daughter, who was getting ready to step over the edge of the bank. “Sophie, get back from there! Go and make sure your brother’s okay!”

He couldn’t see Ben, and he needed to know where the boy was, and if he was injured. The fact Ben hadn’t called for his parents terrified Malcolm. It always was the instinct of the youngest child to run for his mum and dad; his silence was almost intolerable.

Every step he took caused immense pain, with which he only coped by rationalising it as his body’s mechanics at work. If he was so heinously injured, his body would not allow him to stand. And even if he was operating purely on adrenaline, that adrenaline was going to be what saved him. It had to be.

Blue light broke through the trees as the sirens grew closer. Malcolm pulled Sophie away from the bank of Loch an Righ, and jumped into to freezing water. With Sophie’s torchlight, he swam to his wife and daughter, surprised by the cooperation of his own leg. Perhaps the sheer temperature of the Highland water was numbing the pain. “I’ve got her,” he panted to Ella as he put his arms around Nicola. “Can you swim back?”

“Yeah,” Ella gasped out. “Yeah.” She was blatantly physically exhausted, but if Ella Murray said she could do a thing, then she could do it.

Nicola’s body was a dead weight, and it was hard labour keeping her above the surface of the black water. He clumsily threw her out of the loch and onto the dirt road that ran parallel with the bank. When he got the chance to check, he was horrified to find she was not breathing.

He started to administer what he knew of resuscitation. “C’mon, Nic’la,” he breathed while he pressed up and down onto her chest. “Just breathe. Fucking breathe, you idiotic woman!”

“Dad!” Sophie called. “Ben’s still knocked out but his chest is moving. He’s freezing!”

As Malcolm put his mouth to Nicola’s once more, he heard Ella tell Sophie to shed her coat and put it over their brother. On the fourth compression to Nicola’s chest, just as Malcolm was beginning to believe he really had lost her, water spewed out of her mouth, tricking down her cheeks and chin. She was breathing. Her eyes opened, and Malcolm thought he might break down with the relief, if not for the state of everything else around them. “Malcolm,” Nicola said, “you’re bleeding.” Her voice was hoarse, probably from inhaling and then choking up so much cold water.

“Oh, that,” Malcolm smiled, looking down at his leg as it continued to lose blood. “Don’t worry about it. You’re okay. Still don’t have a career as an Olympic swimmer, but you’re okay.”

The sound of slamming doors and the absence of the engines grumbling told Malcolm the police were here. One officer approached him as he and Ella were helping Nicola upright. “Sir,” the young man said, “we’ve got the ambulances coming. Can you tell me about your injuries?”

“Never mind me,” Malcolm answered. “Ben, he’s over in the clearing. Armitage hit him with the stock of a shotgun and it knocked him unconscious.” They looked around, to find Sophie had beckoned help.

The police officer returned his attention to Malcolm. “You’ll need medical attention too,” he said. “It looks like you’ve been shot, sir.” Nicola fixed him with a glare, daring him to downplay being shot in the fucking leg. “Can you tell me your names?”

“Nicola.”

“Ella.”

“Malcolm.”

“Okay,” the officer said. “I’m Sergeant MacPherson. My colleagues are helping your son and daughter over there. Can you tell me what happened?”

“James, my ex,” Nicola whimpered. “James and…and somebody I don’t actually know. They stole shotguns and-” she said, but it was obviously too much for her to handle. Malcolm rubbed her back, trying to calm her before she got the opportunity to descend into an anxiety attack.

Sergeant MacPherson took the hint, and turned to Malcolm and Ella. “Can you tell me where James is at all?”

Ella’s face, Malcolm now noticed, was a ghostly shade of white, and he did not doubt that had nothing to do with her being submerged in Loch an Righ. “We fell in,” Ella told Sergeant MacPherson. “James pointed the gun at Mum and I tried to get it off him. Me, Mum and James, we fought over the gun. It went off and we all fell in.” Her voice was hollow; Malcolm thought she knew something she wasn’t telling the police officer, and that she probably didn’t want to tell her parents, either.

MacPherson walked away, asking into his radio for a dive team to search the loch. When the ambulance pulled up, their first priorities were Ben – who had not yet regained consciousness – and Malcolm. Robert, it seemed, had since woken up, only to find himself in police custody. To everybody’s surprise, Ella demanded that she go in the ambulance with Malcolm, since Nicola and Sophie were to go with Ben. The paramedic, not unkindly, said, “How old are you?”

“Nearly fourteen,” Ella said defiantly.

“I’m afraid it’s up to your parents, then,” he replied.

Ella, sitting resolutely in the chair opposite the bed, stared expectantly at Malcolm. “Dad?” she said pointedly.

Perhaps it was the painkillers he’d been dosed up with that softened his stance on putting Ella through anything else unpleasant, but he said, “Yeah. Yeah, you can stay with me.”

Her smile was triumphant, and as smug as the one Malcolm had so often berated her mother for wearing in public. She had got her own way. The journey up to Inverness was long and silent; the only time anyone spoke was when the paramedic asked a question and Malcolm answered. Ella, however, never once let go of Malcolm’s hand. Her serene smile did not hide her fear from Malcolm, and he knew he had to get whatever it was out of her before the police asked her for her statement. It was better to say something for the second time while speaking to the police, Malcolm always found.

Once in the Emergency Department, Malcolm was left alone with Ella for a few minutes, and seized his chance. “What is it, Ella?” he asked her gently.

She stared at him. “Don’t hate me,” she whispered. “I’ve done something…I think I’ve done something awful.”

“I won’t hate you,” he told her. “I could never hate you. What do you think you’ve done?”

Ella gripped his hand tightly and shuffled her plastic chair forwards. “I think I killed him,” she murmured. “We were fighting over the gun, and my finger was near the trigger…and we…I think one of us tripped? And my finger slipped. And it was pointing upwards into his face. I just keep seeing…there was a moment before we – before we fell in…and half his face was just…gone. And it was me. It was my finger.”

She got to her feet, her face white, terrified and haunted. Malcolm was helpless. There was nothing he could do to wipe that from her memory. All he could do was tell her what any father would remind his daughter: “It was an accident. You were just trying to get the gun off him, and you were protecting your mother.”

“What do I tell the police?” she whispered, like the question was forbidden.

“You tell them the truth,” Malcolm said. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ella. Tell them what happened. They’ll get all the evidence from all of us, and they’ll send it to the Procurator Fiscal,” he explained.

“Procurator Fiscal?” Ella asked, her tone one of unsure confusion.

“In Scotland, they decide who gets prosecuted for a crime, or if a crime even took place. And the Procurator Fiscal will read what happened and they’ll say it was an accident, and they’ll say James should never have nicked the fucking gun in the first place. You’re not in any trouble. The only one they’ll prosecute is Robert Armitage, because he hit Ben.”

Ella nodded, and then leaned down to put her head into the crook of Malcolm’s neck. He stroked her hair gently, realising with another crack in his heart that Ella could never be the same after this. She clearly blamed herself for James’ death, and even a million reassurances from Malcolm would not stop her from tearing herself to shreds. She was too much like her mother for that. “Dad?”

“Hmm?” he mumbled into her hair.

“Don’t tell Mum?” she asked. “Not yet. Wait ‘til we know Ben’s okay?”

“I won’t tell your mum,” he said, “unless you ask me to.”

* * *

 

When Malcolm woke, he found himself in a different room, groggy and hazy. Bella and Ella sat at his side, and the television was playing in the corner. He was horrified when he heard what the BBC news reporter was saying. “It’s understood that Malcolm Tucker was shot, but is in a stable condition. The incident took place on the banks of Loch an Righ-” Malcolm and Bella both winced as the English journalist fucking slaughtered the pronunciation. “-in the Highlands of Scotland. Nicola Tucker has been discharged from hospital, and her son is in a stable condition. Her daughters were unhurt. Mr. James Murray, Mrs. Tucker’s ex-husband, was released from prison yesterday morning, and reportedly followed her to Scotland. He, too, was shot, and his body was recovered from the water by a police dive team about two hours ago. Mr. Robert Armitage, Murray’s friend and ex-colleague who is now also at the centre of a money-laundering investigation by Scotland Yard, is in police custody on charges of assault to severe injury and incitement to commit murder. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal in due course.”

Malcolm turned to look at his daughters; Ella had fallen asleep across Bella’s chest. The clock told him it was half past ten in the morning. “Are you okay?” he asked Bella.

When she realised he was awake, Bella’s head snapped around to look at him. “Me? I’m fine. Jamie’s fucking ordered me to go out and speak to that lot at eleven,” she nodded up at the TV with an expression of disgust, “but I’m okay.”

“Ben?”

“Minor fracture to the skull,” she said. “They reckon he’ll be okay.”

“Nicola? Sophie?”

“They’re fine, Dad,” Bella said soothingly. “The police are just waiting on your statement, but it looks fairly open-and-shut. As far as they’re concerned, James died because he was a fucking lunatic.”

“Where’s my phone?” asked Malcolm. “I’m gonna tell Jamie not to send you out there if you don’t want to fucking do it. You’re not dealing with that just ‘cause you’re my fucking daughter.”

Bella let out a laugh. “No, it’s not that. No, the police and ambulances came from Fort William, and I’m-”

“MP for Lochaber,” Malcolm sighed.

Bella nodded; Jamie was right – Bella had to go out and thank the emergency services sent from her constituency for saving the lives of a Cabinet minister and the Prime Minister’s director of communications. “Euan’s gonna be with me. It’s fine.”

Malcolm went back into work-mode, and ordered her, “Whatever you do, don’t let Euan fucking speak.”

She grinned, but it fell from her face as quickly as it had appeared. “Jamie wants Nicola to go with me.”

“They’ll fucking harass her!” Malcolm protested. “She’s less than twelve hours after nearly dying, for fuck’s sake! And her son’s in hospital!”

“He knows,” Bella said. “But she’s agreed to do it.” Malcolm tried to sit up, but Bella pushed him back down into his pillow. “Dad, no! You’ve had surgery! For fuck’s sake, stop being a fucking reactionary pillock!”

Malcolm glared at her. “Get me my fucking phone!”

“Nicola’s got it.”

“Then get me Nicola _and_ my fucking phone!” he snarled at Bella. She gave him a warning look, but relented. She gently woke Ella and told her to follow her to sit with Ben, Sophie and Victoria while her mum came down to talk about work.

What the fuck was Jamie thinking, sending Nicola out to speak to the press? She was hapless at the best of times; putting her up there after her husband had been shot, her son had sustained a fractured skull, her ex-husband had just been killed and she had almost drowned…she was sure to be a nervous wreck. Anyone would _expect_ her to be a nervous wreck. As excusable as her demeanour would be, she didn’t need to prove to the press she was human. It was the first thing they devoured her over on a fucking weekly basis.

A nurse came in and checked his monitor, and administered painkillers; when Bella returned with Nicola, the nurse was busy writing in his chart. Nicola crossed the room and pressed a kiss to his lips, touching his face lightly. “Are you alright, Malcolm?” she asked. “How are you feeling?”

“Never mind how I’m fucking feeling,” he snapped at her. “Give me my fucking phone.”

“Malcolm-”

“Just give me it!”

Reluctantly, Nicola handed over his phone. Malcolm dialled Jamie’s number and put it on speaker. When it started to ring, the nurse looked up from his chart. “Sorry, you can’t use that in here,” she said.

Malcolm fixed her with a glare, and she desisted, shaking her head as she left the room. “Aye, Hop Along,” Jamie answered. “How’s the leg?”

“What the fuck are you playing at, telling Nic’la to speak to the press?” Malcolm demanded, forgoing any pleasantries. “It’s the most fucking-”

But Jamie interrupted him. “Nicola is gonna go out there and tell the world you’re all okay,” he retorted. “She’s fit for it, so she’s gonnae-”

“Bella could-” Malcolm began, but again, Jamie cut over him.

“She’s also gonnae go out and say that she’s _not_ fucking ashamed of her fucking nutjob ex,” Jamie shouted. Malcolm looked up at Nicola. He could tell, with some frustration, she was on Jamie’s side. “She’s got to detach herself from James Murray, or the press will fucking destroy her down the line. You know that as well as I do! If she paints herself as the courageous, loving, fucking protective mother bear now, that’s how they’ll paint her when they start prosecuting Armitage and Murray’s name crops up in every other fucking sentence in the courtroom!”

Malcolm looked around at Nicola and Bella. Nobody was arguing with Jamie’s approach; indeed, they seemed to support it. And Malcolm had explicitly left Jamie in charge. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Fucking fine. But Euan Whyte does not fucking open his mouth!” he added. “He can’t be fucking trusted.”

“What d’you think I am, retarded?” Jamie challenged him. “He’s there strictly as the supportive husband and son-in-law. That’s it.”

Malcolm sighed. “Right. I’ll see you when I’m back at work.”

“Bye-bye, Hobbles!”

“Fuck off,” Malcolm snapped, and he hung up on Jamie.

At eleven o’clock, he watched as Bella, Euan and Nicola stepped out of what Malcolm recognised as the main entrance to Raigmore Hospital. Nicola looked exhausted, but it was to be expected. “I would like to thank the emergency services deployed from my constituency last night,” Bella said brightly, “for their speedy response to what turned out to be a harrowing event. It was down to the hard work of police and paramedics that the perpetrator was apprehended without further incident, and that the casualties got hospital care in good time.”

The voice of a reporter Malcolm vaguely recognised as being from ITV asked, “Mrs. Tucker, can you give us any updates on your son and husband?”

Nicola smiled and, as tired as she looked, the relief was obvious in her face. “Both are awake and doing well. My son has a fractured skull but should make a full recovery.”

“And Malcolm Tucker?” another voice asked.

“Malcolm had surgery to remove a bullet from his leg, but is awake and…well, making his presence known, shall we say,” she answered.

“He’ll be up and hobbling about Westminster in no time,” Bella added with a grin. “It was his leg that was shot, not his tongue, more’s the pity.”

“What about James Murray?” asked a male reporter.

Nicola’s smile faltered for the shortest of moments. “James Murray was shot and killed at the scene. He turned a shotgun on me, and my daughter tried to take it from him. When I tried to get my daughter out of the way, the three of us struggled over the gun and somewhere in that struggle, the gun discharged and James Murray was shot. The police have ascertained that nobody intentionally pulled the trigger.”

“He pointed a shotgun at you?”

“Yes,” Nicola replied. Her voice had turned cold, and it couldn’t have been clearer she did not wish to discuss that any further. So she, as she always did when she didn’t want to talk about it, deflected. “I would like to add my thanks to the emergency services for finding us so quickly in such a remote area, and also the staff of Raigmore Hospital, whose tireless work through the night have saved both my son and my husband. Thank you.”

Malcolm switched the television off and stared at the pale ceiling. He just wanted to get his family and go home, even if it was to a battle of a whole different nature.


End file.
